All the dirty thoughts
by TheOneTrueBear
Summary: "Added bonus: you won't have to feel guilty about all the dirty thoughts you have about Klaus." Elena goads with a nasty knowing smirk. In the corner of her eye she sees Elena raise the stake for the killer blow and freezes in horrified anticipation. Then there's a woosh and the air moves around her with the faint hint of familiar cologne that smells like salvation. Klaus.
1. Chapter 1

**All The Dirty Thoughts**

Elena's forehead connects with her nose with a sickening crunch and a nauseating pain seems to bounce off the back of her head and settle in her stomach.

"Oh just stop!" Caroline cries out in frustration. "God. This isn't you, and you know it!" She's totally done with the Salvatores and their "softly, softly" approach. Humanity off Elena sucks. "You hurt my mom, Elena. How far are you gonna take it?"

Her old friend sneers at her in disbelief; emotionless Elena is clearly fed up with being told what is and isn't her. "Are you trying to make me feel bad for hurting your mom? Don't you get it? I don't care." Elena looks playfully wicked and it sickens her to see her look so very much like Katherine Pierce.

"I mean, maybe you should try to turn it off. Who knows? You might stop whining about how Tyler left you," Elena goads and then adds, with a nasty knowing smirk, "added bonus: you won't have to feel guilty about all the dirty thoughts you have about Klaus."

"Shut up." She growls, her anger making her voice quiet and dangerous. She realises too late that her reaction is confirmation of what Elena already knows; that her head is full of filth and fantasies about the hybrid.

"Make me." Elena taunts and then they're trading blows like the pat-a-cake they used to play back when they wore their hair in braids and said they'd always be best friends. But they're no longer and she's slowly beginning to realise that a couple of extra vamp years might not be the advantage she'd hoped it would be. Elena is controlled and tight as she fights, trained and unfazed.

Caroline is angry, and conflicted, and deep down she really doesn't want to hurt her friend. She throws a sloppy punch and Elena catches her fist and uses those long delicate fingers to crush the bones in her fist making pain scream up her arm. "You fight like a girl."

Suddenly the pain in her hand is nothing and she's doubled over in agony with splinters in her torn gut and blood bubbling up her throat. In the corner of her eye she sees Elena raise the stake for the killer blow and freezes in horrified anticipation.

The air moves around her with a woosh that bring with it the faint hint of familiar cologne that smells like salvation. Klaus.

Elena flies through the air and crashes into the high branches of a tree cracking wood and bones. She tumbles to the earth limp as a rag doll and Klaus vamps over to the brunette, lifting her by the throat and plunging his hand into her chest.

She wants to call out, to stop him killing Elena but it's all happening so fast and the blood in her throat is choking her. Klaus' hand withdraws seconds later with a sickening slurp and Elena draws in huge desperate gulps of air as he lets her fall to the floor.

"Klaus," Stefan arrives all fear for Elena and deep lines in his brow. "Please-"

"Take her away before I change my mind," Klaus cuts in angrily as he move towards her, expression softening and voice tinged with concern. "Are you alright love?"

Stephan's eyes finally fall on her and they widen with worry and indecisions. Behind him Elena groans and Klaus glares at them both. "Care?" he asks but his body is already angled towards the doppleganger so she does what good friends do and ignores the stab of reminder that everyone always choses Elena over her. "Go" she croaks and makes a flapping gesture with her hand as she tries to stand.

The world spins and she's sure she's going to fall on her face when strong lean arms encircle her. "I've got you," he tells her gently and she clings to his arm to keep from falling and looks at Stefan.

"Go" she insists with a smile that probably looks like grimace. "I'm fine"

Stefan goes and Klaus scoops her up into is arms like a bride and begins walking back towards the town. She shouldn't let him hold her like this, like some prince charming in a fairytale, but she's weak and her stomach hurts like hell and he did just play the hero.

"A close thing love" he says after they've walked in silence for a few minutes and her head has come to lie comfortably on his shoulder. "I'm of a mind to compel sweet Elena to turn on that rare and incandescent humanity everyone's missing so much. Amusing as it is to watch the Salavtores ' pitiful attempts to recover her she went too far tonight" he pauses and looks at her intently, bright eyes almost black in the monochrome of night. "She might have killed you."

She lifts her head and looks at him, traps herself in his gaze as if she's forgotten how simple it would be to look away. After a moment the connection of their eyes weighs on her so heavily that she burst out from beneath it with a grunt and a wiggle.

He releases her and as he sets her down she avoids looking at him and asks. "How'd you manage to be the one saving the day anyhow," she looks ups briefly and her lips quirk. "Not that I'm not grateful"

"Stefan enlisted my help when you and Elena went absent without leave, I overheard your little spat." He fights a smile, pretty lips tight with contained mirth and she groans.

"You know a gentleman would pretend he hadn't heard that" she points out haughtily and he grins openly.

"Of course" he makes a small stiff bow that she is determined to ignore the old fashioned charm of and she rolls her eyes. Of all the rotten luck he had to be the one to over hear Elena's taunting.

He's merciful though, he doesn't tease her, or push her he just steps in close again and takes her shoulders. "Are you sure you're ok sweetheart"

She nods.

"Very well," he tips his head and she notices they're almost at her house. "The sheriff is at home, I'll leave you in her care"

She nods again, struck by a sudden and uncharacteristic muteness and he gives a sweet crooked smile and turns away.

"Klaus" she calls him back and answers his smile with a brief unsure twitch of her lips. "Thank you," she whispers sincerely and it's his turn to nod.

His fingers come to her cheek and the contact is unsettling for so many reasons not least being the spark of anticipation that makes her involuntarily wet her lips with her tongue.

The movement draws his gaze for a second then he looks at her with something wicked and exciting and scary in his eyes. "You're welcome," he murmurs in a bedroom whisper that makes a thrill in a way that's equal parts lust and fear. "Caroline"

Her name rolls over his tongue like sweet flowing honey and for all her protestation about not being seduced by him she feels like she's falling through a vacuum, weightless and silent but still hurtling towards something devastating

"God," she explodes suddenly. "Seriously?"

He looks disorientated and she wonders if maybe he was tumbling too.

"You killed Tyler's mom then you ran him out of town!" She ploughs on and ignores the way he seems to struggle to catch up. "Not to mention that your toxic werewolf bite almost killed me not very long ago. You have brought nothing but misery to everyone I care about. You think I'm just gonna fall into bed with you because of one random act of heroism? You're disgusting" she finishes with a snarl.

"I assure you your mind is several steps ahead of mine in this case Caroline," he retorts. "I was merely appreciating your beauty I had no-"

"Well you don't get to do that" she cuts him off. "Why can't you just leave me alone?"

His eyes harden for an instant then and idea sparks in them and he tilts his head, the answering anger that had just begun building in his body seeping away, leaving her more anxious than ever.

"Very well love, I'll offer you a deal." He smiles charmingly and alarm bells blare in her mind. "I, my expensive gifts, romantic drawing and," the corner of his mouth quirks upwards, "random acts of heroism, will leave you alone just as you ask"

He pauses and she fidgets nervously. "And what do you want in return?" she asks suspiciously.

"Oh a mere trifle I assure you," he steps closer again and his voice is barely more than a whisper. "Share with me just one of those," his tongue runs briefly over his lower lip and he sounds each of his next words out deliberately. " 'dirty little thoughts'"

She rears back in shock to see mirth dancing wickedly over his face and challenge in his eyes.

"Caroline," her mother's voice calls worriedly form the porch.

"Do we have a deal?" Klaus persists and she can't believe she's considering this. But then isn't it a small price to pay to get him out of her life? She'll feed him one of her tamer fantasies and then she'll never have to deal with him again.

"Caroline, honey are you ok?" her mother is walking towards them now and she wants him gone before there's some sort of scene.

"Fine" she hisses. "Deal"

He flashes her a bright crooked smile and then he's gone leaving her alone with her mother, a lot of explaining to do, and butterflies dancing in her healing stomach.

 **A/N hope this piques some interest out there, i have the next chapter ready, should get it up soon. Let me know what you think**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The velvet box, the white bow, the small ivory card, all lie familiar and challenging, on her bed.

"Shit," she hisses to herself as she snatches it up and carelessly tears it open not even glancing at the elegant letters on the card. It doesn't seem fair she thinks peevishly a she gawps at the stunning emerald pendant inside that he has to have such impeccable taste.

She's managed to avoid him for a full week since he rescued her from Elena and they made, in what she now considers a moment of pure madness, their illicit deal. The stone glints invitingly from it's luxurious bed of dark velvet and her fingers twitch with the desire to lift it to her neck and see if it brings out her eyes as she expects it will.

Instead she snatches it up and storms out of the house.

She finds him sitting in the nearly empty grill and waves the box in his face. "What's this?" she demands.

"A gift," he replies with a small insolent smile.

"No," she retorts. "It's a prompt"

"Not at all love," he indicates the stool beside him and without thinking she sits. "I wouldn't think that were needed, you're not the type to renege on a deal now are you?"

"No" she frowns, feeling cornered. "But just so you know you are blowing this way out of proportion"

"Am I?" He turns away before she can respond and orders a bottle of Pinot Grigio.

"Yes" she takes a sip of the wine and he does the same, looking at her over the rim of his glass with dancing puckish eyes. It really doesn't help, she thinks, that he's so pretty and playful sometimes, such easy company. "Any Cosmo girl can tell you that fantasies are natural and healthy, it really doesn't matter who they're about"

"I quite agree love," he smirks. "There's nothing wrong with an active imagination"

"Precisely!" She declares emphatically.

"Tell me Caroline," his tone changes suddenly from playful to serious. "Are you alright? After your altercation with the doppleganger"

"Sure," she tries for a flippant. "Vamp healing and all"

"Not exactly what I meant love," he pushes gently and she shrugs.

"I just can't believe that she'd try and kill me, I mean, it's Elena," she pauses and bites her lip. "She's supposed to be my best friend."

He seems in that moment to understand all the complexities of her reaction to Elena's attack. Of course on one level she understands that Elena is not herself, but she can't quite separate the actions of this version of her friend from her remembered one.

Why her? She thinks sometimes. Why was it her Elena tried to kill not Bonnie or one of the Salvatores? She knows she was never the first choice of best friend and she wonders sometimes if Elena and Bonnie just put up with her because they're both too darn nice to do anything else. He sees it she thinks, all that self doubt, all those feelings of unworthiness, sees it because he has those feelings too.

"Ah sweetheart," he says eventually. "Elena's not herself. I've seen vampires go against the one's they love the most with their emotions off. If she singled you out its got nothing to do with how much she cares about you, its because she sees what you are"

She frowns, ready to be offended. "And what am I?"

"You're a threat," he replies as if it were obvious. "You're the strongest of the lot of them. You're the one least likely to let her have her way and most likely to force this emotionless farce of hers to an end. Going after you was pure cold self preservation, so don't read anything more into than that."

She gives a small unsure smile. He always does this, just when she's sure she's found a way to hate him, he twists her around with his perception or his vulnerability and she's back to wildly bailing out her heart as it fills, like a sinking row boat, with something far too close to affection.

"Caroline?" Stefan's voice startles her and she feels disorientated as she turns away from the hybrid.

"Hi, er, Stefan you ok?" she flounders with a forced bright smile.

"Yeah. Listen its about Elena," he says and she resists the urge to roll her eyes. Of course it is, isn't everything? No that's not fair, she loves Elena, truly she does, she'd just like to have the right to be pissed at her for at least a while.

Beside her Klaus snorts, "No doubt," he voices her thoughts for her. "Well I'll leave you all to tend you're precious doppleganger"

He stands and begins to leave then turns and smiles at her. "I'll see you soon then, Caroline"

She nods and he goes and she has to blunder quickly into asking about Elena because Stefan looks decidedly suspicious. "What's up Stef? Is Elena ok?"

She makes it another three days before she gets his next nudge. This time in the form of a rolled up piece of ivory paper tied with a crimson bow. If she's excited as she reaches for it, if her heart races in her chest and her fingers tremble then she doesn't acknowledge it, any more than she's acknowledged how much he's occupied her thoughts since she made this stupid deal.

She unrolls the paper, already constructing in her mind the perfect disdainful response to whatever misguided idea of romance she expects to find inside. Instead she laughs. She laughs the sort of instant liberated laugh that burst unbidden from your body when you're taken by surprise by a humour that perfectly matches your own.

She puts on a little makeup, just the faintest hint of blusher and a dab of lip-gloss, just enough to make her question her own intensions. Before she leaves she unrolls the page one more time, on it is a drawing of her face, hair blown up and back as if by a wind machine. Above her image the word "Cosmopolitan" blares in bold capital letters and around the image headlines in mismatched fonts make her grin at his cheekiness. "Your fantasies: Making them real", "Bad boys, could you handle one?"

At his house she enters uninvited and watches him from the doorway, hand haughtily on hip, humour threatening to break through her peeved façade.

"You know it's scary how authentic this is?" she says without preamble and lifts the page a little.

"Bekah," he explains with a grin, indicating the space beside him on the couch. "She seems to have read nothing but this puerile nonsense since I undaggered her and to think she used to so enjoy the bard"

"Hmm," she wanders into the room, sits beside him and unrolls the page, the image yet again making her smile, its so silly and so far from what she'd expect from him and yet not because its also playful and its all about her.

"Looks like a fascinating issue," he says and he's laughing in his eyes, she can tell that he's delighted to have tickled her with his efforts and that makes her roll her eyes and beat down hard on a stir of warmth in her chest.

"Drink?" He offers and reaches behind him for a glass.

"Ok, but just one"

The elegant stem of a champagne glass find its way into her hand and then he's reaching for a bottle from the silver bucket on the side table.

"On ice?" she asks with a tinge of offence that doesn't stop her holding out the glass for him to fill. "Presumptions"

He smirks as he fills his own glass. "But accurate"

She rolls her eyes. "Whatever, it's not like I can afford the good stuff so why not?"

"If you like it I'll have Elijah reserve you a case or two"

"Elijah?" she asks confused.

"This particular vintage is from one of my brother's vineyards, a stunning little chateaux in Champagne." He looks at her from under his lashes and laces his next words with invitation. "You'd love it"

She bites her lip, she can't deny that she does sort of like the idea that he'd still take her anywhere she wanted to go. "One of?" she asks just to save them from an awkward silence

"He has several. Old world only of course," his eyes sparkle with fond mockery of his stuffy older brother and she nods seriously and fights a smile.

"Oh of course."

"He also has a few very exclusive restaurants in Paris and New York. Compulsion may get you the basics Caroline," with the air of imparting wisdom. "But if you want to acquire the kind of wealth my siblings and I enjoy you need a few legitimate income streams, it draws far less attention"

"Well I'll bear that in mind," she quips. "So what are yours, drug running and brothels?"

He gives her an unamused look. "Real estate mainly, some stocks"

She pulls a face. Real estate seems just too ordinary for him, too boring.

He refills her glass fluidly and she takes another hefty sip, it delicious and the bubbles are already going to her head. "So what brings you here then love, other than to critique my artwork?"

"Well since it seems you're not going to stop harassing me," she says with a pointed look. "I figure its best to get this damn deal over with."

He smiles charmingly but his eyes are suddenly sharp and watchful and she nervously downs her glass of champagne. "Ok" he says simply.

Her glass is mysteriously full again and she takes another long gulp. "God this is weird," she gripes and he just grins. "Right"

She stands to put distance between them and he stands too and wanders over to the mantle piece, looking down into the flames and giving her a few moments to gather herself.

She's already decided which one to go with, and yes she does have a small library of Klaus based fantasies to choose from, not that she'll tell him that. But this is the tamest so she's sure she'll be safe sharing this one.

Eventually he turns to face her and she swallows hard. "Fine ok, if you really must know, your tattoos. I may, very occasionally mind you, think about your tattoos."

He glances down bashfully and that must be an act used to trap less savvy women than her because no one this old and this hot could possibly be shy. "Any context for that love?" he asks and looks up at her through his lashes.

She knew he'd want the details, that's ok she can do this. Get it over with and get out and never have to see him again. Because, and she is extremely firm with herself on this point, she does not want to see him.

She does not want to be the girl who wants the guy who hurt everyone she loves and if she doesn't get clear of him with his charm and his champagne and his changing vulnerable eyes, she's going to wind up doing something incredibly stupid.

"Well, in my fantasy, and can we just remind ourselves that fantasies mean absolutely nothing, I would be sitting on your lap. You have no shirt on and I am tracing the birds on your shoulder. With my fingers", she adds hastily. "Before you say something perverted"

He frowns briefly then his lips twitch and he bites them and looks away clearly fighting a laugh.

"What?" she snaps. She'd been prepared for his interests, his wicked teasing, his seducing gaze, but in the face of his mirth she is wrong footed and defensive. "What's funny?"

"Nothing love," he assures her not very convincingly.

"Then stop laughing," she insists crossly.

"Sorry," he cracks and lets out a brief stifled giggle that would be amusingly cute coming from the big bad original hybrid if she weren't so busy being offended.

She huffs and heads for the door. But his hand catches her arm. "I'm sorry love, don't go. Please, have one last glass of champagne with me"

"Fine," her hands go to her own hips. "If you tell me what's so hilarious"

He looks a little chastened. "Aw sweetheart pay no mind to it, your confession wasn't exactly what I expected that's all"

"How do you mean?" she pushes. "You wanted my fantasy, there it is, I'm sorry you found it so comical"

"Caroline, sweetheart, don't be angry," he hands her a glass and she takes it grudgingly. "Your fantasy is absolutely charming, just like you"

"Charming?" she grinds out getting increasingly irritated. "As in quaint?"

He looks unsure for a moment; his mouth moves a fraction silently before he speaks. "Of course not love."

"You think it's boring?" she accuses.

"No, but you must admit it for a fantasy it is perhaps a little," he searches uneasily for a word. "Reserved"

She feels affront register on her face and sees it reflected in his apologetic eyes. "It is not, it's sophisticated and hot"

"Caroline, it's positively chaste"

"No," she draws the word out pointedly. "It's just heavy on sexual tension and anticipation and you have no imagination"

He makes and unconvinced noise. "I can assure you my imagination lacks nothing and nor does yours, its innocence is beguiling, truly"

"Innocence, seriously?" she isn't sure why she's so insulted, so disappointed perhaps, by his reaction. Sure she hadn't picked her steamiest fantasy but still she thinks it's got to at least register a smolder on the hotness scale.

He makes a placating gesture with his hands and digs himself further into a hole. "Love relax, it's perfect, adorable-"

"Shut up" she snaps. "Just stop talking and sit the fuck down."

"Caroline, what-"

She shoves him hard in the chest so he's sitting back on the couch. She'll show him innocence the patronising jerk. "You are totally picturing it wrong. Shirt off, I'll show you"

He looks uneasy at her sudden aggression. "Now! Mr No Imagination" she demands and he obeys swiftly.

She settles in his lap, one arm around his neck the other lying gently on his bicep and looks into his eyes. The conciliatory apology and uneasiness are gone, replaced with a wicked glint of mocking humour.

She closes her eyes and gives a small shake of her head. "And I'm an idiot," she tells the ceiling with a huff and feels his laughter rumble through her body.

She should move, its one thing to be tricked, it's another to just stay there in his lap with her fingers on his hot bare skin. She makes a half-hearted attempt to move and his hands grip her waist and pull her back down firmly. "Apologies love, I couldn't resist teasing you. Forgive me?"

"No" she snaps.

He sighs and moves to stand them up but without thinking her hand slams down on his shoulder, pinning him in place. Vaguely she's aware that this is madness, that she should be running for the hills right now, but the heat of his body under her is enticing and this fantasy of hers, which she has played out in her mind so many times, is suddenly flickering into reality.

She looks challengingly into his eyes and then, with deliberate slowness, moves her hand so that it hovers over the black ink on his shoulder. He watches her intently, almost warily, and when her fingers finally make contact his eyes close and his lips part.

She watches her own fingers as they dance over the image, running form the base of the feather on his upper arm and up across his chest to where a wingtip brushes just below his collar bone. Her heart is hammering so hard in her chest that the rushing of her own blood is all she can hear and every nerve ending seems to be on high alert, buzzing under her skin.

"Caroline" Klaus speaks in a hoarse whisper. "Sweetheart perhaps-"

"In my fantasy you don't talk so much" she says distractedly and turns her attention to the panther that bares its teeth on his other bicep, her fingertips with a barely there pressure tracing the line where flawless skin meets ink.

"In your fantasy," Klaus asks in a hushed voice once she's trailed her fingers back across the pale skin of his chest to play with the birds again. "Are you wearing a dress like this one?"

Their eyes meet and his burn with so much wanting that her throat goes instantly dry and she is terrified of what she's doing and yet utterly unable to stop. "Yes" she breathes.

He nods and looks down to where his hand hovers above her slightly parted knees. "And in your fantasy am I permitted to-?" he leaves the question hanging and meets her rabbity eyes again.

Muffled in the centre of her brain her sanity is screaming. "No, no, no, you are certainly not" but it's buried deep beneath layers lust and shallow desire and honesty, because in her fantasy he most certainly is. She nods mutely, slightly urgently, and he traps her eyes as his hand settles on the bare skin of her inner thigh.

She can smell her own arousal, knows he can smell it too as her panties soak with her need for his touch. She's sort of embarrassed and sort of not because she can feel his answering need pressed against her thigh. And the symmetry makes it somehow ok.

His fingers turn maddening circles on her skin not travelling upward, holding their position just above her knee. While hers go exploring all over the landscape of his upper body. Over his shoulders they ghost and down his abs to his navel and back again to the tattoos where her hand splays out, maximizing contact.

Their faces are so close now that they're breathing each other's air and she can't look away from his eyes as the arm that's around her body shifts so that his hand presses firmly against her ribs and his thumb can brush teasingly along the underside of her breast.

"In your fantasy," he whispers again in a voice so low and rough that she holds her breath to hear him. "Do I kiss you?"

For a moment she considers lying, because she wants so much to feel his lips on hers right now. She shakes her head. "No" she forces the truth barely audibly past her lips.

His eyes close and his jaw clenches and she can see him struggle to exert control over himself. No one, she thinks with a thrill, no one, has ever wanted her this much.

She's aware that her hands have stopped moving, that she's just clinging to him while he teases the skin of her thigh and staring dumbly into his eyes. She was a fool to think that this fantasy would be safe, she should have known, or perhaps she had known, how indescribably intimate it would be.

She reminds herself she didn't come here intending to act it out but she's no longer sure that she hadn't half expected this. His hand travels higher on her thigh and she makes a small involuntary noise that makes his eyes darken and his breath hitch.

She opens her legs a fraction in invitation and tries to will a command for him to touch her from her mind into his. She wants to break script from her fantasy, she wants his fingers to slip boldly beneath the cotton of her knickers, she wants her dress torn and discarded on the ground and her breasts tumbling freely into his hands. She wants the hard length of him, that she can feel ever more insistent against her leg, in her palm, the silken skin sliding beneath her eager fingers.

"Klaus," she breathes his name like a plea. Please she wants to say please just do it. His thumb brushes once over her clit through her knickers and she gasps and claws at his shoulders. Everything is buzzing and aching with want, her breast feel tingly and neglected her centre empty and yearning to be filled by him.

"God Caroline," he murmurs and drops his head into her shoulder. She feels his breath, hot and ragged, against her neck as he draws in deep steadying lungfuls of air. Then his hand withdraws from her thigh and he stands and sets her on her feet carefully.

"What?" she asks stupidly, aware she's just standing there, unsteady on her feet and staring at him. "What's wrong?"

"Rebekah's home."

"Shit," a curse on her lips, guilt hammering in her chest.

She grabs her bag and makes hurriedly for the door, the last thing she needs is for the youngest Mikaelson to walk on on this little scene; Klaus shirtless, the champagne, the heavy scent on desire in the air. She's sure Rebekah would have a lot of fun making sure her friends knew all about it.

"Caroline," his voice stops her and she turns, already irritated with him.

"What?" she snaps.

He steps up to he and touches her face, his expression turning a little melancholy. "I am many terrible things Caroline, but I am still a man of my word"

She doesn't understand for a moment, then the terms of their deal come back to her, this is goodbye. "Oh, I…" she trails off, she should be glad to hear it but she's still honestly a little lust addled and her heart is racing with the fear of being caught.

"Goodbye", he leans in and kisses her cheek gently. "Caroline."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"Caroline?" his voice is concerned for a second then he bites his lip and looks at her from under his lashes his tone turning knowing. "What are you doing here love?"

Yes she thinks, and wrings her hands together. What is she doing here in her short skater dress and strappy wedges, hair in beach curls and lips tinged pink? "I…"

He tips his head quizzically, wolfishly, and his full lips part just enough to draw her gaze.

"I wanted to make sure you aren't going to go back on our deal," she lies far less smoothly than she'd planned. "I figured you might use Rebekah's interruption as and excuse to call it off and keep hounding me"

"Is that right?" he turns and walks back into the house making her follow him. "Funny that this thought should cross your mind now, almost a fortnight later in fact, despite that I have made no attempt to approach you."

She'd known it was a pretty flimsy excuse when she'd spritzed on her best perfume and headed over here, but she'd rather hoped he'd just let it go. He obviously has no intention of doing so. Turning up at his door, dressed to kill and smelling of Coco Chanel and barely masked desire is the final capitulation in a dozen days of battling with herself and now she wishes fervently she'd had more fight in her.

"Well I've been busy"

He laughs. "Of course. Well fear not Caroline I wouldn't dream of backing out on an agreement. You can run along now sure in the knowledge that the bastard won't trouble you again"

He tips a hand towards the door, prompting her to go and she feels small and stupid and her face burns with humiliation as she turns to leave. Then in a flash of vampire speed he's in front of her. "Or" he drawls, predatory and wicked and sexy as all hell. "Stay and tell me why you're really here"

"I…" she stumbles but she never was one to stay mute and unsure for long. "I don't know alright?" she snaps instead. "I just am"

"Very well, perhaps I can offer a reason," he smiles with cold white teeth. "You are here because you believe that turn around is fair play. That if you have shared a fantasy with me then I am obliged to share one of mine with you"

No that's not what was in her mind when she came but Jesus the thought of hearing his fantasies about her sends thrills shooting almost painfully into her belly. Fear chases arousal around her body and out of her mouth.

"Hardly!" She spits. "I am so not interested in whatever sick kinky stuff you drean up in your perverted little mind ok"

"Sweetheart" he doesn't step closer but his voice is so heavy with suggestion that she feels crowded. "I assure you if you let me show you what is in my mind you'll leave today no less chased than you did the last time you allowed yourself a moment's honesty with me"

She glares at him.

He moves away and smiles innocently. "In fact while you accused me of thinking your fantasy boring. I am certain that mine will in fact leave you quite bored"

She frowns, its not much of a sell but that just makes her curious so she lifts an eyebrow and leans her weight on one hip. "Fine tell me your boring fantasy"

Now he does come close and his voice is like liquid seduction poured over her skin making her lick her lips in anticipation. "I'd rather show you love"

"This doesn't change our deal," she clings to some measure of control despite that she's the one that came to him.

He bows his head, ever the old world gentleman. "As you wish"

"Fine"

He circles her, eyes openly trailing over her body and she finds herself swallowing hard and staring straight ahead with rapidly beating heart. When he gets round to her side he holds up a hand in invitation and she places hers in it and lets him lead her up the stairs, his eyes never leaving hers as they walk. In a sunlit drawing room on the first floor he lets go of her hand and moves behind her his hands skating lightly over her arms and up to her shoulders.

"You look lovely today Caroline" he speaks softly in her ear. "Did you think about me while you dressed? Have you chosen your prettiest knickers for me?" his hand finds the zipper of his dress as he speaks and there's no use denying it because her dress falls away to reveal a matching La Perla set in peach lace. He hums appreciatively. "So you did," he murmurs.

She doesn't say anything, the part of her that wants to scold him for his forwardness is gagged by the thrill of his eyes all over her body and the fire of the close-mouthed kiss he lays on her shoulder.

He takes her hand again and leads her, wide eyed and trembling to the velvet chaise lounge. He reaches behind her and deftly unclips her bra, slips his fingers under the straps and eases them down her arms so her breast fall free and her breath hitches nervously.

He doesn't touch them, doesn't even look away from her eyes to look at them, how unlike the boys she's been with she thinks, how much more intense his neglect than their attention.

He drops the bra and indicates with a tip of his head to the chaise. "Sit down love"

She sits and he lays his hands on her shoulders, close to her throat, thumbs brushing her collarbones, and presses her back so she's reclining against the antique velvet. As he withdraws his hands brush her sides, missing her breasts, making her tingle.

He moves down so he's kneeling on the floor at her feet and she certain he's going to go down on her. She's thought about that so often, brought herself off imagining his tongue working her pussy so many times, that the reality of it makes her choke out and involuntary squeak of anticipation.

He smirks knowingly at her and gives a single slight shake of his head then he lowers his gaze and begins removing her shoes taking his time with the fiddly straps, stroking her ankles as he does, rough finger tips on smooth skin.

He lifts her foot and positions it on the chaise then he leans over her and pulls a long silk scarf from the behind her. She watches with quickening breaths wondering if he's going to tie her up with it, a possibility that at once frightens and excites her.

But he doesn't, he drapes the pale material across her hips and runs his hand up her arm positioning it so it lies under her head then he steps back and looks at her. "Perfect" he says softly, intimately, and she blushes under his praise. "Now hold still"

He steps away briskly and she lifts her head. "What?"

"Hold still," he repeats and she suddenly notices the easel as he places a canvas on it.

"Oh" she says dumbly. "You're going to paint me"

"Sketch you. Just to get the lines." He flashes her a dimpled easy smile as if he hasn't just built the sexual tension in her body to breaking point and left her hanging. "Shouldn't take too long"

"Oh", she knows she sounds like an idiot; she doesn't need his smirking face hammering it home. "Right, guess that's why I'll be bored then"

"Yes, hold still now love"

"Right ok, sorry. Can I talk?"

"Of course" his pencil moves over the canvas. "In fact to alleviate the boredom why don't you assist me with something?"

"Well that depends what it is" she finds with a bit of distance she can collect herself.

"I must confess," he says conversationally. "That since your last visit my thoughts have been rather occupied with you Caroline"

"Really?'

He gives her a chiding look. "That surprises you? Truth be told knowing what you fantasise about the two of us has made me rather curious. Tell me Caroline, where are you when you think of us together?"

She considers telling him to go to hell but she's come here after all and with him a few safe meters away she can fool herself that she's not playing with fire. "In the shower sometimes, usually in bed"

He hums softly. "What do you wear to bed Caroline?"

She frowns. "That is magnificently creepy question"

He laughs and she can't honestly say she doesn't love the sound, rich and throaty and genuine. "I suppose it is, but humour me sweetheart I'm trying to perfect a mental image"

"Fine, plaid cotton shorts and a cami" his forehead creases to display his lack of understanding so she clarifies. "Like a strappy vest"

"Hmm sounds charming," he says with laughing eyes. "Very small town girl"

"Ha ha. I suppose leather and lace are more your thing," she snips.

"Not sure it'd suit me love," he smirks at her disgusted expression. "But whatever floats your boat

"Wow now there's a mental image I can never unsee" she snarks back at him. "Thanks for that"

She likes this, she isn't sure why but this sudden lessening of the tension, this playfulness frolicking between them, she likes it a hell of a lot more than she should. Knows it's more difficult to justify even than her lust for him. Dirty thoughts are one thing, warm and fuzzy thoughts are quite another.

He sketches in silence for a few moments then without catching her eye picks up the conversation again. "When you lie in bed Caroline," he doesn't lace his words with seduction; they are casual to the point to indifference. "When you give in to those dirty little thoughts about us, about me," he pauses minutely to regard the line of her arm then his eyes meet hers. "Do you touch yourself?"

"What?" She squeaks, shocked at the directness. "I am so not answering that"

The indifference peels back like a snake sliding form its skin revealing the real serpent beneath, bright scaled and sharp fanged. "Does your hand travel down between those stunning breast of yours?" Finally he lavishes them with the caresses of his eyes and the skin heats and tingles in response. "Across your belly to the waist of your shorts?"

She doesn't answer but that doesn't seem to bother him. He turns his attention back to the canvas and she feels the absence of his gaze, the sudden cooling of his attention, like a chill wind on her skin. "Does it slip inside? Delve between your legs while you imagine my skin beneath your fingers, my breath on your neck as you touch me?"

"Klaus," his name, a warning, a rebuff, an invitation.

"Do you find yourself wet for me then Caroline?" his gaze comes slowly up to meet hers, spears her with nonchalance right through her belly and tugs insistently at her sex.

"Yes," its little more than a croak, just audible above her deafening breath, he doesn't smile, his lips purse, full and pretty, too pale to be feminine but soft enough to hint at it. She stares at them, anchors herself to them by the lifeline of her gaze while her body is buffeted like a rag doll in the storm of her desires.

"And when you make yourself come," he continues while studying her feet. Then he pauses to lean back and study his work from a slight distance leaving her hanging in anticipation of his next question. "When you picture all the things that I could do to you, that you could do to me, do you say my name?

She's trapped now in truth and desire and though her voice is soft and hoarse there's almost relief in it, relief at being able to allow herself another moment's honesty with him. "Yes."

"Hmm," he hums eventually, his stormy eyes the only hint that he's affected at all so cool is his demeanour. "That is a sound I think I would very much like to hear." His pencil moves again scratching against her ears and drowning out her broken breath.

"When you think about it," she eventually asks in a voice that in her own ears sounds uncertain and childlike in its hesitance. "Do you… do you touch yourself?"

He looks at her, tilts his head like a dog, eyes sharp as a wolf. "Yes" he says simply and goes back to his work.

She makes a small inarticulate noise and he smiles a regards her from under his lashes. "Do you like that Caroline?" he asks softly. "Does it make you feel powerful?"

"Yes" She's gone monosyllabic. She can't seem, in the face of his erotic questioning, to form more than these throaty affirmations.

"I am a thousand years old," he continues in the same casual tone, eyes moving with a professional detachment from her body to the page as he draws. "There is no facet of sensuality I have not explored. I have pleasured queens and courtesans, princes and demons and yet for you Caroline I am as a fumbling callow boy, my cock in my hand, your name on my lips as I come"

"Jesus," she swears and fights the flow of energy surging outward from her centre trying to propel her towards him.

"The line of your calf is exquisite Caroline," he says still eerily calm. "It is perhaps the most gratifying of your curves to sketch"

"Oh," his sudden deviation throws her, slaps her out of the daze of erotic fascination that had settled on her and makes her quaver. "Thanks, I guess"

"I have enough," he says, suddenly standing. "I can finish from memory"

He doesn't lace those words with innuendo but still an image, which has nothing to do with painting, leaps into her mind. The thought of him, just as he described, cock in hand, sends thrills shooting into her sex adding fresh scent to her already soaked panties.

She sits up awkwardly drawing the scarf over her breasts as if only now becoming aware of their nakedness. He picks up her bra and sits besides her reaching one arm around her back and sliding the straps back up her arms, she makes small silent adjustments to help him as he brings the bra back into place and as he does he openly cups her breast through the material for a second before running his hands backward over her ribs to redo the clasp.

Her shoes come next, this time when he kneels before her and takes her foot in his hand he lays a single hot wet kiss on the inside of her thigh just above her knee before he replaces her shoes one at a time, slowly slipping each one on to her feet and doing the buckles, eyes flashing up to hers occasionally as she watches him.

When he's finished he pulls on her hand indicating she should stand, he doesn't rise with her, he stays on his knees so his eyes are level with her belly button and runs his hands up the outside of her thighs to her waist.

Then he kisses her along the lace waistband of her knickers from one hip to the other, his lips are hot and its all she can do to keep from trying some desperate move to get his mouth where she wants it, like standing on her tiptoes or pressing down on his head like Jimmy Walters had done to her back in 10th grade at Home Coming.

Once he's travelled back again to her navel he drops his head and kisses her once at the apex of her thighs through the lace of her panties and she can't stop herself from bucking towards him with a hissed "Klaus" bursting unsanctioned from her mouth.

He stands and takes her hand, holds it up high as he leads her, with their bodies freezing miles apart, back to where her dress lies crumpled on the floor. She steps daintily into the circle of bare floor at its center imagining she looks elegantly serene despite the flush of arousal blooming over her body and her parted panting lips. He squats down, to gather it up running his hands lingeringly down over her breasts, across her sides and over her bottom as he goes.

He looks up at her and his eyes are a darker shade of blue than she's ever seen them, like the deepest parts of the ocean, in his gaze she fancies she can see the depth of his desire but he doesn't let it show on his face. Instead he lifts her dress back up her body the material grazing all the places his hands overlook, the yearning flesh unbearably sensitive beneath the soft cotton caress.

He moves behind her again and she looks at him over her shoulders as he runs his fingers down the bare strip of skin beyond the open zip. Then he steadies one hand against her waist and slowly draws the zip up while placing a handful of soft kisses on the back of her neck.

She breathes hard, how can him dressing her be so indescribably arousing, she has never wanted anything as much as she wants him right now. He pulls back and she spins desperately in his arms and clings to him. "God Klaus please" unbidden the plea is tumbling from her lips while her hands grasp his shoulders like she's terrified of slipping into the abyss if she loses her grip.

"Caroline," her desperation penetrates his self control, buffets around inside his shell of calm and breaks back out in the ferociousness with which he pulls her body against his own.

She feels him hot and lean all along the length of her body, his grip almost punishing on her arms, his arousal pressed against her belly, and grinds herself senselessly against him, dumb and animal in her wanting.

He pushes her from him with unyielding strength and looks at her with a wonder in his eyes she's never seen before. "You are beautiful Caroline," he tells her. "But you should go"

"What?" she shakes her head but it doesn't clear and she feels her face crease in confusion.

He nods and releases her, leaving her floundering about in a swamp of her insecurities some old, some new, all crippling in the face of this rejection. "Did I do something wrong?" she curses the pathetic intonation of her voice, thinks in this moment she must look very young and stupid in his ancient eyes.

"If you stay Caroline," he tells her firmly. "Then you will give me what I want and we both know you would regret it," he runs his palm over her hair flattening the curls against her ear. "Go quickly though love, I'm not a strong man"

He steps back out of range and, with a deep determined breath, turns away. She stares at his back for a few moments a myriad of emotions spinning so fast inside her that they blur into one another and she can't pick one out of the mess. In the end she turns and walks away, he heart thumping in slow reluctant beats as she manages, by sheer force of will, to instruct her legs to keep her moving away from him.

She doesn't look back until she's at the door but he hasn't moved, and the fantasy that he might chase after her shrivels and dies in her chest, along with something else that she can't name. She hurries then, short quick steps, silent on the stairs as she flees towards the heavy front door.

Her hand makes contact with the handle for a fraction of a second before she's pulled away, spun around violently into his arms. His mouth crashes down on hers and something inside her surges up in ecstasy, some wild liberated part that's wanted this since the first time he looked into her eyes and promised her the world.

Her body follows that fierce rising and she throws her arms around his neck and lifts herself on her toes to press her chest against his and push back against his bruising kisses with a matching force. She invades his mouth with her tongue, tastes his teeth and revels in the deep groan that rumbles form him in response. No two people, she thinks, have ever wanted something as much as they want each other right now.

He tears himself away from her mouth and tries to step back. "No" she growls and pulls him forcibly back into a kiss that makes him moan and grasp artlessly at her bottom in an attempt to pull her closer to him.

Eventually he uses his superior strength to pries her off him. "Caroline, sweetheart stop"

She shakes her head stubbornly, he wants this, she felt it in the urgent possessiveness of his hands as they travelled over her back to squeeze her arse and tug her close, felt it too in the fervor of their wet messy kisses not to mention the hardness pressed avariciously against her belly.

"You don't want this love," he tells her and he sounds resigned, almost defeated. "Not as I do."

"Seriously?" she can't believe he's sending her away, anger flares brightly in her heightened state of excitement and she gestures wildly between them. "I think it's pretty obvious that against all sanity I really want this"

"Precisely my point. Do this Caroline and you'll wake tomorrow with the shame of having fucked a monster, is that what you really want?" His eyes darken and he sneers, his handsome face made ugly by the bitter twist of his lips. "Or will you hate yourself for it?"

He's right, goddamn him of course he is. If she throws down with him right now for what she imagines will be the ride of her life then she'll have to live with it tomorrow. She'll have to face all her friends knowing she fucked the guy who killed Jenna and Carol and ruined Stefan and Elena and pretty much destroyed everyone's life. She knows enough about herself, he does too it seems, to know she'll despise herself for it.

He takes an aggressive step towards her. "Leave Caroline" he snarls and she remembers only now that he is actually a really scary guy.

As she leaves she turns back and catches him watching her with clenched jaw and burning eyes. For a few seconds they look straight at each other before she can tear herself away. She's running before she's down the steps of the mansion, full vampire speed across the gravel and back to the cold safety of the town.

 **A/N hop everyone's enjoying reading this as much as i'm enjoying writing it.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

It has to be Stefan for this conversation. He's a man, which is a must for this. He's a genuine friend and not one to judge, also a must. He'll also probably go along with what she imagines will be her entirely transparent 'hypothetical' question.

"Hey Care," he greets in a lackluster tone. Also, she thinks sadly, he's probably too wrapped up in his Elena troubles to go uncomfortably deep into hers.

"Hi Stef, how you doing?" she came for herself but seeing him so low makes her ache for him so she turns herself over to his needs, lets him talk about Elena and the ongoing nightmare of her emotionless state. Eventually he mentions Damon, says he trusts Damon not to take advantage and that gives her the opening she needs.

"So guy perspective then," she says. "If a guy was really hot for a girl, like been chasing her for ages hot, and then suddenly he gets a chance to sleep with her, why would he not?"

Stefan frowns, "Are we talking about Damon?"

"No, no" she gives him a sideways smile and a shake of her head but she imagines the whole gesture is less nonchalant than she was aiming for. "Just hypothetically, I'm curious."

She looks expectantly at him, waiting for an answer and he shrugs awkwardly. "I'm not sure, was she drunk. Hypothetically"

"Not on booze," she says to herself and that makes him look at her quizzically. "Nope sober as a judge"

"Well then I guess I would stop if I thought she wasn't into it"

"But what if she was into it, like really really into it" she smiles a quick forced smile. "Hypothetically, I mean"

"Sure," he looks skeptical. "Caroline are we talking about-"

"No," she cuts in guiltily. "Just wondering why a guy would turn down a girl he wanted when she was clearly good to go."

"Perhaps, if I thought she'd regret it," he suggests uncertianly.

"And you'd care because? Well you'd care because you're a decent guy but why would a not decent guy care?" She should really bail out of this conversation, but she needs these answers. She's spent far too much time over the days since Klaus kissed her and sent her away trying to make sense of his motives and she desperately needs another perspective. "Why would Damon, for instance, care?"

"So we are talking about Damon?"

"No, seriously Stef, just run with it ok"

"Ok I guess someone like Damon would only care if they really cared about the girl," he sighs. Poor Stefan she thinks sadly. "Like he does about Elena. If they wanted more than just sex maybe."

She frowns at that, it makes a sort of sense in the abstract, the hypothetical, but it doesn't fit the reality. Klaus is an irredeemable narcissist who takes what he wants with no regard for anyone. At least that's what she understands of him, what she's determined over the time he's tormented her with his wickedness and charm in equal measure.

But if Stefan is right, if those feeling's that have always swum unspoken around them are more than lust and curiosity. If he genuinely cares enough about her to not have sex with her then she's in more trouble than she thought.

She'll have to stay away from him. She trusts he'll keep his word, and again she wonders if her certainty stems from that same unacknowledged knowing, and leave her alone. All she has to do is do the same. It surely can't be that hard.

Six days later and she's thinking hard would have been a best-case scenario. Staying away from him is a trial that makes Hercules' tasks look like child's play. She can't get him out of her head no matter how determined she is to find distraction, cant get him off her skin no matter how many cold shower's she takes.

She finds herself manically throwing herself from one fruitless strategy to another. Sublimation might work to dull the need for blood but it doesn't dull the ache low in her belly for him. She stress cleans her mother's house until it sparkles but it doesn't stop her mind always spinning back to his words as he sent her away, "the shame of having fucked a monster" that's what he'd said and in his eyes she'd seen something so close to self loathing that she can't help but believe he hates being what he is.

She masturbates furiously, futility trying to picture something other than his lean body as she ruthlessly works herself to one unfulfilling climax after another. Always when she comes she does it with the sound of his voice echoing in her mind, replaying the dirty thoughts they've shared but afterwards as her heart beat slows and her breath calms she hears something else. "You don't want this," he'd said. "Not as I do"

Her fingers work roughly over her clit but her body stubbornly refuses to find release with her mind locked tight against him. She growls and throws herself over on her bed so she's laying on her front with her hand between her spread legs. She fidgets in frustration, turning her head form side to side and she catches sight of the pale blue scarf draped over the chair beside her bed.

She hadn't realized until she was halfway back form the mansion that day that she'd still been clutching it in her clenched fist. She'd sat on her bed with his kisses still burning her lips and stroked the expensive silk pensively as she'd tried to make sense of his actions and her own, her abandon and his restraint, his sadness and his anger.

She grabs it now and brings it to her face, it doesn't smell of him exactly but the scents of his studio cling to it, paint and cedar and the faintest hint of scotch no human could detect. The smell fizzes in her senses and transports her back to that day so that she can feel his cool eyes on her and hear his voice coaxing confessions from her.

She plays the scene, more dirty thoughts of him dancing in her imagination. Hears in her mind's ear him escalating the encounter beyond the murmured words and fleeting touches of that day. She imagines him in that eerily unaffected tone asking her to show him exactly how she pleasures herself for him. She pictures herself writhing wantonly on his chaise while he sits at his easel and sketches her, watching with storm blue eyes that hint at passion beneath the too calm surface.

"My Caroline" she imagines he might have said, in her fantasies he is ever possessive, she doesn't analyse why her body responds to eagerly to imagined claims of ownership but experience has shown her that it does. "Will you cum for me, my love? Will you say my name as you do into the solitude of your room?"

"Yes, god" she gasps both in the sandbox of her fantasy and into the silence of her reality.

"Good girl," he might praise her and she buzzes at it. She tips her hips back and increase the pace of her fingers.

"Fuck" she gasps and breathes in the smell of the scarf again. She's so close, closer to real release than she's been in days. In her minds eye she cums with a desperate plea in the form of his name and it undoes him.

He stands and comes towards her stripping his t-shirt as he does and unbuckling his belt. He stands above her so she's looking up at him and slowly frees himself from his jeans. The image in her mind is so vivid that in the grip of it, and of this heady lust, she is almost certain that is actually what happened that day.

She sees herself looking up at him hungrily as he strokes himself and imagines what he would say. He never used to talk that much in her fantasies before, a little filthy praise here, a possessive endearment there, but since that day she has constructed new fantasies in which sprawling litanies of seduction tumble from his lips and slide around in her body. It seems to be the only thing that fans the flames enough these days to bring her off.

In her fantasy she moves to take him in her mouth but he tangles a hand in her hair and tips her head back as he works himself their eyes locked the words still pouring from his mouth and urging her body onwards towards release.

"Do you want me to cum for you Caroline?" he asks and she groans desperately and tries to nod against his grasp. "Will you wear my colours then girl? Shall I decorate that beautiful face with my cum?"

"Fuck yes" she gasps, she can't believe how arousing she suddenly finds the thought of him doing just that. She pictures the rhythm of his hips the fast smooth movement of his hand, the pleasurable pain on her scalp as his grip tightens and he jerks her head further back as his cum spills onto her face.

She shudders violently against her hand, but keeps up the punishing movement of her fingers, riding out her orgasm and pushing on through the hypersensitivity that follows to a second with the image of him collapsing to his knees before her and kissing his own semen from her face.

"Klaus" she murmurs, not at the height of her orgasm this time but in the slumping contented moments after when her body goes limp and her heart beats deafeningly in her ears. "God Klaus."

She fingers the scarf as she calms, its magic is dormant again in the aftermath, it is no longer the key to a portal into the frighteningly real world of her fantasies, it's just a beautiful scarf smelling almost imperceptible of paint.

Eventually she returns fully from her imagination and berates herself for once again giving herself over to him in her mind. Even fantasy Klaus is a betrayal of everyone she loves, the perfidious kisses she shared with the real thing over a week ago are tantamount to treason in her own mind. She showers. Turns the dial till the water scalds her skin and zealously scrubs the shame and juices from her thighs and asks herself for the millionth time "what the hell is wrong with me?"

The next morning she wakes angry with him, almost angry enough to go marching into his home ready to hurl down accusations, if she could think of a single thing to accuse him of right now she'd already be there. She can't so she spends the day trying to study for finals and gets so frustrated that by early evening she's desperate for a drink.

She texts Bonnie and Stefan and heads over to the grill hoping that one of them will respond to her invitation. When did she become so very short of friends she wonders.

Matt is working the bar and his smile when she enters feels like the sun coming out form behind a cloud. Sweet human Matt it seems so very long ago that she wanted him as more than a dear friend, she can't now believe that he ever excited her, excitement has taken on a whole new meaning recently, but how she does still love him.

"Hey" he greets warmly and surreptitiously adds bourbon to her coke without her having to ask. "Bad day?" he asks tossing a bar towel over his shoulder, every inch the stereotypical barman.

"Bad year" she gives him a rueful smile to take the bite out of her retort. "Just keep 'em coming barkeep"

He smiles and nods and turns away and with her attention no longer on him she suddenly senses a presence in the bar, old and powerful and thrilling. Without thinking she scans the room for him, he's watching her from the far end of the bar and when her eyes meet his he looks down quickly into his drink.

How dare he she thinks, the excitement of realising he was near morphing back to anger, how dare he look so normal, so human? How dare he pretend to just be a guy caught looking at a girl?

She marches over, feels her face set into an angry mask, thin tight lips and narrow eyes. "So much for leaving me alone," she snaps at him, self-righteous and accusatory. "Guess your word has about as much integrity as the rest of you"

If it's hurt that flashes across his face before his own anger rises she pretends she doesn't see it and swallows down hard on the regret that threatens to press an apology from her mouth.

"Well at the risk of sounding childish sweetheart," the endearment holds no fondness, he's defensive and scornful. "I was here first"

She scoffs. She's regretting deeply coming over here, she really had no reason to and now she's clinging to a self-righteousness she doesn't feel and wishing she could just go back to her seat.

"You approached me Caroline I had no intention of –"

"Whatever" she cuts in haughtily. "Just stay away form me"

"Gladly," he keeps his voice low but still she hears a snarl in it. "Until the next time you come looking for me"

"I did not come here looking for you," she retorts indignantly.

"Perhaps not but I knew the exact moment you realised I was here love," there's a nasty sort of seduction to his tone now that makes her shoulders tense and her jaw tick nervously. "Cover what you feel with petty accusations if you like but I heard your breath hitch, your heart rate pick up"

"Fear"

He tips his head and the corner of his mouth rises in a cruel smile. "Doesn't smell like fear"

"Gross"

"But accurate," suddenly his eyes sharpen and she realises he's recognised the scarf she'd foolishly decided to wear tonight. "You know sweetheart I'm beginning to doubt your commitment to our deal." His voice drops to a sultry sort of poison and he fingers the silk about her neck. "Coming to me smelling like you do and wearing the scarf I laid across your body when I painted you"

She swallows hard and tries to keep from sounding like she's been caught out somehow. "It's a nice scarf"

He shakes his head, exasperated she imagines with the flimsy transparency of her lies, and turns back to his drink without another word.

She stands there for a few seconds feeling magnificently foolish caught between the desire to flee and her curiosity. "Did you finish it?" she asks when finally curiosity wins out.

He looks back and she can see from his expression that he can't make her out and it's driving him mad. "Yes" he answers neutrally, clearly waiting for her to show her hand, she wishes she knew herself what was in it.

"Are you pleased with it?"

His eyes flash up to the ceiling and when they come back to her she can sense the softening in him, his voice when he answers confirms it, rich and sincere and so engaging. God she loves when he speaks to her like this, the accent, the old fashioned phrasing, the almost hypnotic cadence of his words all come together to ensnare her. "Painting that which one finds beautiful is a two edged sword Caroline" he says and she draws in breath at how his compliments don't sound like compliments but rather just like truth. "It can be inspiring but there's always the feeling of not being able to do justice to the subject." He flashes a coy dimpled smile. "But yes, I'm pleased with it"

She smiles back uneasily.

"If you'd like to see it I could arrange to be elsewhere," he offers without looking at her.

"Yeah" she bites her lip awkwardly. "Yeah I'd like to see it"

Now he does look at her and the sensation of being pulled into something inescapable comes over her. The thought that in quicksand struggling just makes you sink faster pops into her head and she goes still and just looks back at him.

"Very well, I will leave the house at 5 tomorrow and won't return till late. I'll move the painting to the studio so you can find it."

"Where's it now?" she asks reflexively.

He looks bashful and his mouth quirks. "In my room." He looks young and handsome and if she were a normal girl and he weren't the devil himself then she imagines in this moment she might be falling for him until something panicked rises in her, scared and lashing out.

"I should have guessed" she sneers nastily. "It's still perving even in oils you know."

She expects some kind of come back, his usual injured rejoinder, harsh, right to he bone, but he just clenches his jaw and closes his eyes for a moment. Then he picks up his glass and the half full bottle from the bar and without another look moves over to a booth in the far corner leaving her at the bar alone and wondering what the hell just happened.

"You ok?" Matt's voice snaps her out of her thoughts a moment later. "Was he bugging you again?"

She smiles. "Just the usual Klaus creepfest" she says flippantly feeling dishonest and oddly abashed at her own behaviour, hoping against hope Klaus doesn't heat her.

Matt goes back to work and after a few minutes she turns to see him sitting there, his back slightly to her as he pours another shot, she wonders if he's going to drink the whole bottle tonight.

Eventually she pushes herself away from the bar and settles in the booth next to his so they're back to back with the thin wood between them. "I'm sorry," she mumbles knowing he'll hear her. "That was bitchy" he doesn't respond and she ploughs on. "Look don't sulk Klaus you can hardly blame me, you are the bad guy you know"

She hears him chuckle, but its not a happy sound. "Yes I suppose I am. The quarterback certainly seems to think so if the devil's eye he's giving me is any indication"

She glances at Matt who's watching them with a stormy brow. "I suppose that explains your imaginative seating arrangement," the hybrid continues coldly. "Tell me do you think it's fooling him any more than it's fooling me? Or perhaps it is yourself you wish to deceive"

"Klaus don't"

But he's hurt and when he's hurt he's hurtful and he won't stop. "Perhaps if you keep this flimsy barrier between us you'll be able to make yourself believe you don't want me. That your eager cunt isn't dripping for me even now while you feign revulsion or that you wouldn't have let me fuck you like a whore against my front door just last week, that you didn't beg for it"

The words are ugly, deliberately so, he's so fragile this man-monster so easily hurt, so foul in his reaction. "Klaus just stop ok, Jesus why do I even bother?"

She should storm away but she doesn't she just lays her head back against the high back of the booth and sighs.

"Perhaps because you're body doesn't care a jot what I am or what horrors I've committed," he continues, his voice taking on an icy neutrality. "Because it doesn't care how much your little gang of misfits may hate me, it would still have me screw you right under their noses given the chance"

She wants to walk away from this onslaught of bitter insults but she's just tired of trying to figure him out and it's not even as if he's wrong, every single word is true and today she realises she likes it better when she's honest with him than when she lies.

"I used to think about that way back before Elena turned" she says eventually and feels something change in unrelenting anger buzzing in the air around them, a tiny crack in his rage.

"Did you now love?" the endearment holds little affection. "Back when you were Tyler's girl you mean? And yet still you thought of us"

"Yeah" she murmurs softly and clearly he wasn't expecting the confession, she hears him shift in his chair and her name falls uncertainly form his lips.

"I used to imagine that I'd slip out the back right over there" she tips her head towards the rear entrance not caring if he sees the gesture. "That you'd follow me and find me in the ally out back"

"Caroline" he says again and perhaps there is a hint of warning beneath the husky timber of desire.

"I always imagined that I'd push you against the wall, I think I liked the idea of being in control because you scared me so much." He doesn't respond but the tempo of his breathing lets her know he isn't exactly unaffected by her words. "I thought about going down on you, how you'd look down at me and call me beautiful."

"You are beautiful" all the anger is gone from him now and he sounds almost reverent as if to him her beauty is a tiny deity worshipped only by him.

"Why didn't you?" she asks impulsively because conjecture and Stefan's bewildered opinion haven't given her an answer to the question she's been battling with for days and without having to look at him it seems possible to ask. "Screw me like a whore I mean"

"Because you are not a whore Caroline." He says it in a voice made for love rich with reverence and conviction. 'Not a whore' isn't the worlds greatest compliment sure but in his voice he could be calling her a goddess and it would sound just the same.

"Klaus?" she asks hesitantly after a few moments indecision. "Are you in love with me?"

He doesn't answer and she's not sure if his silence is telling or not, but it chokes her until she has to say something, needs a reaction of some sort.

"If I walked out the back right now," she asks eventually, speaking so softly she imagines even his hybrid senses might struggle to hear. "Would you follow me?"

He swallows, she hears the wet nervous sound and his breath seems to tremble as he sucks it in. "No" his voice is firm but not harsh or scornful, still rejection is rejection and she's never taken it well.

"What? Why not?" she's honestly shocked by his refusal and a little indignant.

He's silent for one, two, three heavy beats of her heart then she hears him stand. "You know why not" he says curtly and then he's leaving and she watches him stride determinedly to the door knowing that she must look stricken in his wake.

Her friends don't show and she really doesn't want to face any questions form Matt about the scene he's just witnessed. So she goes home, lies on her bed and thinks about Klaus Mikaleson till her head swims with confusion and her body throbs with want.

She touches herself for the second time that day with his voice in her mind but this time she hears words he's never said, words she can't believe she's beginning to think she could hear form him someday, words that make her whole body tremble violently.

She pictures an encounter between them that is more tender than anything she's ever thought about, ever allowed herself to imagine, pictures them in bed together; a deep steady rhythm, kisses all up and down her throat and his voice in her ear as he cums. "I love you Caroline."

 **A/N so it wasn't my intention but this might be turning onto a love story, oops looks like i just can't help myself**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

She checks her hair and glances at her watch. He said he'd leave the house at 5, which gives her half an hour to get there before he goes. She bites her lips and looks at her own face, she looks nervous and so she should be, she's planning to ambush an original in his own home after all.

She almost talks herself out of it on the way over, but the desire to see him is stronger than all the common sense she can scrape together and all her guilt combined, stronger she thinks in this moment than anything else.

By quarter to five she's striding in with false bravado to find Klaus, surprised, and shirtless in his palour. "Caroline," he glances at the grandfather clock that stands near the door obviously confirming that it is she who is early rather than he who is late.

"You're early love," he says guardedly and then with a smirk. "You wouldn't be trying to engineer another meeting between us now would you?"

She huffs and crosses her arms. "Seriously, you're one to talk, you don't exactly look like you're about to go out. Maybe you were waiting to ambush me"

He narrows his eyes and looks offended. "I was going to the woods"

"Yeah" she scoffs. "You always go to the woods half naked?"

He steps up to her and the instinctive desire to move away from him and all his predator's power is almost too strong to resists. Almost. She tilts her chin and keeps her gaze steady on him and he smiles at her stubborn bravery.

Then he lifts one hand and they both look at it as the fingers extend with a sickening crack of bone and tawny fur covers it. The wolf, suddenly she's taken by a powerful desire to see his other form, wonders if she'll ever be able to ask him to show her.

"Oh", she says instead sounding a little dumb. "You do that?"

"Occasionally," he says neutrally as his hand returns to its human shape. "I find it offers a certain clarity"

"Doesn't it hurt?" she asks.

He narrows his eyes and tips his head. "Indescribably."

They're silent for a moment then he breaks it in a soft firm voice. "Why are you here Caroline?"

"I wanted to see the painting and since I don't know anything about art I figured it'd be better if I had, you know, a guide or whatever"

He frowns and she sighs and drops the pretence. "Fine, I just wanted you to show it to me, ok. It's not everyday a girl gets her picture painted," she admits and he looks icily at her for long awkward moments before he rolls his eyes and offers her his arm.

She takes it, painfully aware of the nakedness of his chest, of how close she is to all that tantalizing pale skin, of the burning werewolf heat of him seeping into her own cool skin. They don't speak as he leads her to his studio but she feels his eyes on her profile as they walk and keeps her own trained forward with a military discipline despite the heat tingling in her cheeks.

Her control breaks the moment she see it. He leads her into the studio and on an easel in the center is the framed image. "Oh my god"

She untangles herself from his arm and steps towards it. "Oh my god"

She hears him chuckle behind her and manages to reluctantly tear her eyes from the image.

"Klaus," she says as she turns to look at him. "It's beautiful"

A smile dances shyly on his lips. "You're beautiful Caroline" he says sincerely and she laughs dismissively.

She flaps her hand towards the image. "I'm not that beautiful," she says but she can feel the delight like a fountain rising up in her chest and she can't help but grin at him.

He shrugs his disagreement with one shoulder as she turns back to the painting. "That's a matter of opinion love"

She looks back at her own form, captured in what her uneducated mind labels a renaissance style. He's told her before that she's beautiful, Tyler said it a few times too, even Matt said so once, but she's never in her life felt it. Not until right now anyway, she's always had too many insecurities to truly believe it.

Elena is beautiful, Bonnie is beautiful, not her. She knows she's slim and blonde enough to catch the eye. She knows she basically ticks the right boxes but beautiful? That's always seemed too ethereal, too precious, a label for bitchy overachieving Caroline Forbes.

"Thank you" she whispers turning again to find him slipping a paint stained t-shirt over his head. Part of her pouts that he's covered up his frankly drool-worthy torso but the action has mussed his hair into soft disarray that makes him look younger and sweeter than he has any right to look and that makes her weak for the need to touch him.

She's about to go to him when another easel catches her eye, the painting it houses is compelling to look at and makes something twist fearfully in her gut.

"Is that Mikael?" she asks and he glances tensely at the painting.

"Yes" he says tersely and she can almost see the walls going up around him layer after protective layer conjured into solid reality in a moment.

"It's horrible," she says honestly then gives him a quick awkward glance. "I mean it's brilliant but it's horrible, it makes me feel kinda," she swallows, she's treading on some dangerous personal territory here she thinks. "Scared"

He doesn't respond, just watches her with guarded eyes, his face a lie of impassiveness. "When was it?" she tries, she can't explain why these walls of his bother her so much, but a moment ago he was open and smiling bashfully and now he's closed off and frozen solid and she hates it.

He swallows, a flick of weakness across his Adam's apple, and she gives a small tight smile of encouragement. "A memory" he says eventually. "From when I was a child"

She swallows now and her eyes prick with empathy. She looks again at the figure in the image, he seems to tower over the canvas, his face twisted into a hateful snarl, his arm raised. "He used to hit you?" she asks. Thinking perhaps she already knew that somehow.

He moves away. "All fathers struck their children in that time," he tells her as he busies himself pouring two large measures of whiskey. "Mikael's violence went far beyond discipline however." He hands her the drink and looks at the painting again with a clenched jaw and a moist sheen on his eyes. "My mother needed all her magic to return me form the point of death more than once."

"That's terrible," she says her voice a little shrill with shock and outrage.

"It was a long time ago," he says dismissively and looks away again.

"But this isn't" she says knowingly and touches the painting finding wet paint on her fingertips. "You painted this today?"

He shrugs, clearly uncomfortable. "That's why you needed clarity," she intuits and follows the thought. "Painting Mikael got you all twisted up?"

"Almost love, the painting was actually today's first attempt to purge the demon, and a failure at that, the wolf is something of a last resort"

"I don't understand," she says. "Mikael's gone Klaus"

"The broken shells of his children are immortal," he replies and now he stares at his stepfather's image, his eyes sparklimg just faintly enough that he could deny the tears. "The damage he has done will live quite literally forever"

Her compassion sits like an octopus in her chest and reaches out it's many arms to stir pity in her stomach and movement in her limbs. It pushed her legs to step towards him and lifts her hands to cup his face. "I'm so sorry he hurt you," it commands her lips to say as her thumbs brush his cheeks. "No one deserves that"

"It was a lo-"

"Do not say it was a long time ago," she says firmly, her compassion is gentle at its core but she's always been short of patience with emotional dishonesty. "Because that implies that you're over it and well", she gestures at the painting. "Evidence to the contrary."

He huffs out air through his nose and looks up at the ceiling. "Perhaps," she starts haltingly. "Perhaps, there's another way to purge. Maybe a softer way"

He looks curiously at her and she squares her shoulders blocking out the firm sane voice in her head telling her not to do this. Her hands move into his hair and she pulls gently on the back of his head moving his face down so that her lips and his hover millimeters apart. "Don't think about him," she whispers. "Just for a little while"

And then she kisses him despite the sudden panic in that sane voice commanding her to stop. She wants too much to comfort him. Her pity will not be overridden now; it is the victor of her emotions, the undisputed heavy weight champion of her heart.

He's rigid and unsure but she doesn't stop, she moves her mouth over his until he relents, traces soothing patterns on his skin until he relaxes into her embrace. She is surer in this moment that he's in love with her than in any moment before, the way his tense muscles soften under her searching fingertips and his mouth molds to hers.

She is consciously gentle. Gentle beyond their shared nature, her fingers run featherlike across his shoulders, her lips slip softly over his and to her surprise her accepts her careful comfort. His own hands mirror hers as they explore each other with an almost frightened tenderness that she'd never in a million years have imagined could pass between them.

She's fantasied every filth she can imagine about him, she's dreamt him rough and possessive, she's picture him suppliant and lustful and angry and demanding. More recently she's even concocted scenes filled with a deep surging tide of love but never has she imagined this. Never the agonising beauty of these feather-soft, soul deep, touches.

Her body reacts, she feels the thrum of wanting, and feels too his answering desire press lightly against her belly. She's vaguely aware that they want each other very very much but it doesn't seem to matter to either of them right now. Right now she is kissing away the sting of lips split and healed a thousand years before, she strokes out bruises that have long ago bloomed and vanished and are yet as real right now as they were on the flesh of a frightened boy a millennia ago.

She draws him backward through the open door of his bedroom and towards his bed without for a moment breaking their connection and he lays her down with one arm around her waist and one on her cheek brushing away the tears she hadn't known she was crying until he smears their wetness over her cheekbone.

They don't speak. There are no words for this. Even his name would be too harsh she thinks, even hers said in that rolling hypnotic drawl of his could shatter this moment into a million pieces and she wants very much to preserve it. Eventually they sleep, she doesn't know who falls asleep first, doesn't remember a moment's breaking of their endless kissing until her eyes open and his shut a fraction too late to fool her.

Is he feigning sleep to keep her close she wonders or to allow her to leave? Either way she takes the opportunity to study him, he is ridiculously handsome like this with his face smooth and relaxed in the imitation of sleep but she misses the vibrancy of his blue eyes with that mischievous sparkly that has been chipping away at her defenses for so long now.

"I know you're awake," she says and his lips quirk but his eyes remain shut.

"Hey," she pokes him in the shoulder and his lips twitch again. "Hey"

He doesn't open his eyes and she huffs out a disgruntled "Fine" and purses her lips, then a puckish thought hits her and she sneaks her hand between them and up under his shirt to tickle the smooth skin beneath. His abs twitch enticingly under her touch and he squirms almost imperceptibly away. It's just enough show of weakness to make her pounce.

"Ah ha," she crows and her other hand joins the assault until he has no choice but to, laughing, open his eyes and try to trap her relentless hands. He flips them effortlessly his eyes dancing with laughter and joyful threat as he pins her beneath his body and retaliates in kind making her squeal and thrash in an attempt to escape his playful torture.

"Ok," she gasps eventually, "Ok, ok, I give."

He chuckles and stops tickling her, but his hands still lie inside her blouse on the cool skin of her waist and she's suddenly very aware of their heat. She feels the laughter of the moment drain away leaving in it's place just the feel of his hands on her skin and the connection of their eyes.

He's going to kiss her. She realises that is inevitable in this moment, realises too that although he's the one about to place his lips on hers that she was the initiator. His mouth feels soft and hot against hers, more demanding than the night before, more sensuous.

She kisses back, because, well, she's not made of stone and he feels amazing. She hears a needy moan come from her own throat and her hands travel to his shoulders, not exploring but simply clinging to him while she groans out her desire into his open mouth.

It's going to happen, they're actually going to have sex and all she can think in spite of herself is 'finally.' Without thought she feels her body begin undulating under his, nothing she does now is done mindfully, everything is instinct. She is filled with a rising sense of rightness, it's going to happen, it has always been inevitable and she is, deep in her soul, so very glad.

He kisses his way up and down her throat just the way she fantasised the night before as his hands explore the skin of her sides and his hips answer the surging oceanlike rhythm of her body as she rubs herself against him.

"Klaus," she says his name like a prayer and her hands finally find the ability to move from their place on her shoulders to travel raggedly over his body. "God Klaus"

"Caroline," he breathes in her ear then he's kissing her again and she feels her need for him ratchet up until she's tugging artlessly at his cloths and whining in her throat.

Like everyone else her fantasies always a steal a little romance novel illusion, a beautifully choreographed coming together in soft focus perfection but this is better. This clumsy desperation that makes her hands shake as she tries to tug his shirt over his head and the wet messy clashing of their mouths as his passion surges up to crash against her own like two stag locking antlers, brutal and animal in it's rawest form.

She tears her mouth away from his before the intensity of it overwhelms her. "Fuck" she hisses and claws at his hips as she grinds against him. "Please"

Clearly he likes it when she begs, her blouse rips loudly in the silent house and she throws back her head as he turns his attention to her breast, kneading and fondling while his mouth runs hot wet kisses down her cleavage and to her nipple, her bra pushed hurriedly aside.

It makes her rash and crazy with wanting and she searches impatiently for the buckle of his belt. Her need fans out into every inch of her body from the aching emptiness at her center, madness chases desire from her belly to her fingertips and she rips the belt wildly from him and tears open the zipper.

"Please" she begs inarticulately again and he responds by reaching up between her bare legs to finally, and god she's been waiting forever for this, slip beneath the soaked fabric of her underwear.

"God" he hisses and closes his eyes as if losing himself in the wet feel of her. "God Caroline."

"I need-" she starts and pumps her hips against his hands. "Klaus I-"

"Hush" suddenly he goes utterly still. "Shh love someone's here"

"What?"

He lays a finger on her lips and cocks his head to listen. "It's Ripper"

"Klaus" she hears Stefan's call. "Are you here?"

He looks at her and suddenly his weight over her body makes her feel trapped. "What do you think love?" Klaus asks in a whisper. "Should we pretend we're not here and hope he goes away or find out what doppelganger crisis he's having this time?"

"Seriously are you crazy, I am not getting caught here," she snaps under her breath, fear of discoverymaking her lash out. "With you." That last comes out nastier than she ever meant it too and he flinches visibly before his face hardens and he stands fixing his clothes, which she'd been so urgently tearing from him moments before, with sharp angry movements.

She wants to say sorry for being a birch but she can't even begin to form that sort of surrender so she just stares at him as he moves to the door. "Best keep quite then hadn't you sweetheart and trust I keep your shameful secret"

He goes and she sags back onto the bed and stares at the ceiling. "Shit." She mutters before getting up and straightening her own cloths. When she hears Stefan leave she finds Klaus pouring drinking whiskey in gulps inappropriate for anytime of day let alone this early in the morning.

"What did he want?" she asks because she's too much of a coward to offer up the apology she knows she owes him.

He doesn't answer and she bites her lip, "Klaus, look I…"

"Don't you have places to be Caroline?" he asks calmly and she wishes he sounded angry. If he were angry, she'd get angry, and they thrash this out with raised voices and painful truths.

Like this she knows it's pointless talking to him, his shields are up so high she'll never get past them. So she just nods and heads for the door where his voice stops her.

"Caroline," he says in that same calm neutral tone. "You should know that if you come to me again I will consider the terms of our deal void"

She turns to him, frowning because honestly she's considered them pretty much void from the moment she sat herself down in his lap and traced patterns on his skin, she's a little shocked he 's still honouring it after last night.

"If you come to me again, I will pursue you," now emotion does colour his voice making it just a fraction hoarse. "I will have you, and I will ruin you"

She opens her mouth to speak but he turns his back before she can formulate any words. "Goodbye Caroline"

She looks at the floor feeling her brow scrunched up with confusion and dissatisfaction. "Klaus, serious…" she looks up and he isn't there, she didn't even hear him woosh away.

Her shoulders slump and she leaves, she should check in on Stefan and her friends, try to find out what crisis could have brought her beast friend to the hybrid's door because whatever it is cannot be good.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N i know, i know its been ages, such a bad bear. I wish i had good excuses like work or college but the truth is i discovered House on netflix, remembered how much i fancy Hugh Laurie and have been binge watching them till my eyes bleed.**

 **I am back to writing now and in exciting news the lovely gargslywoof has heroically offered to beta these which is just brill, she rocks!. :-)**

 **Onward with the tale..**

 **Chapter 6**

"Stef," her voice rattles harshly around the boarding house as she enters. "Hello?"

"In here," Stefan answers in that tired, defeated tone that has clung to his voice now for weeks.

In the parlour Stefan stands by the fire, but her eyes skim over him only briefly before settling on the other figure in the room. The one whose presence makes her cheeks flush and her blood thrum with nervousness. He tilts his head and observes her impassively.

"Klaus?" the word holds enough uncertainty to make Stefan look at her curiously and she scrambles to cover her mistake. "What is he doing here?" she addresses Stefan in an irritated voice and Klaus' eyes narrow.

"I think Silas is in Mystic falls." Stefan answers a different question and she scowls at him and tries not to look at the hybrid lounging with feigned indifference and guarded eyes on the leather couch opposite.

Stefan talks and she tries to listen but all she can hear is her own heart beating in her temples and the rustle of Klaus' clothes as he stands and walks across the room. He's unusually quiet, only a few disdainful quips have left his mouth, and he's let Stefan decide their course of action with almost as little input as she's given. Perhaps he's feeling equally distracted by what happened between them; by the night they shared, the undeniable depth of the connection, and how carelessly she shattered it with her frightened cruelty.

They head to Professor Shane's office and on the way over she catches him watching her with a cold, appraising expression that makes her stare straight ahead and fight the urge to swallow nervously. By the time they arrive he seems to have made a decision. The humour is gone from his eyes and he goads them with nasty playfulness while she does her best to ignore him and concentrate on finding Bonnie and her crazy witch massacre.

"We'll have to split up," Stefan says when they identify two possible locations for the last point of the expression triangle. She'll go with Klaus, she decides; she'll talk to him about what happened earlier that morning - and if he's not too obnoxious - she may even apologise.

"Fine, you two go east, I'll go west," Klaus says and turns to the door.

"Ok." Stefan gathers his jacket, ready as always to be a hero.

"No." She draws both their gazes with her shrill objection and she moderates her voice and tries to sound casual as she turns to the hybrid. "I think I should go with you."

"I disagree, love." He makes the endearment feel like a slap across her cheek, so coldly does he utter it. "I'm quite powerful enough to handle anything lurking in the woods on my own, you two are not. So unless you have some compelling reason you'd like to share then you'll go with Stefan." He raises his eyebrows and looks at her, daring her to say something. Her silence deafens her and makes him sneer.

"I thought not," he says, and then he's gone with a loud whoosh of air.

"Care?" Stefan's voice brings her back from the pointless, stupid staring she's doing at the space where he'd stood and she takes a deep breath and makes for the door.

"Let's go," she growls, and leads the way without turning to see the frown she knows is on her friend's face.

It's she and Stefan that find Bonnie in the centre of a circle of witches, laid out on the ground like an offering to some long dead god. Blood vessels burst in her head as the witches send them back and she drops to the floor.

The in a rush of air Klaus is there and for a moment she thinks that everything is going to be ok. It's not. He holds Stefan back, tells them they can't save their friend without giving Silas what he wants.

He's right.

She doesn't care.

"No!" He roars in the same moment that she turns the dagger on the witch. And in that instant, as the blade slips with barely any resistance between fragile ribs, she can't tell herself the violence of it doesn't feel good. But then the others fall, toppling each in turn like dominos and realisation falls on her like a ton of cold, wet earth.

She looks around the circle of dying witches and then her eyes find his, her own filled with a plaintive sort of pleading, though what she's begging for who can say. But his face is set with anger and there's no solace to be found there.

Stefan looks shocked; his mouth hangs slightly open, his eyes wide and disbelieving. Oh god she killed a dozen witches with a flick of her wrist, and Bonnie is mumbling about the triangle and she can't think so she just stands there like a statue frozen by her own mistake.

"Get her out of here," Klaus barks at Stefan and gestures at a now unconscious Bonnie. "Before I finish her off myself."

She looks at him, taking charge, and falls into the safety net of his decisiveness. "What about them?" She asks, looking around at the corpses littering the clearing.

"Pile them up over there while I go and get a bloody shovel."

He goes and the bodies feel colder with each corpse she drags to the edge of the clearing. Each one's skin is more frigid than the last, each unceremonious dumping digging a deeper pit of guilt in her stomach. The third from the last witch looks barely over twenty, her hair mousy and pulled back into a modest ponytail. How much had this girl ever seen, Caroline wonders. Had she travelled? Studied? Had she ever been in love? None of that can happen now; her skin is too cold.

By the time Klaus returns she's feeling a little insane, her own voice turning on itself over and over in her mind, accusing then justifying, scoffing then pleading, and finally, without anyone to hear and no one who could ever accept it, apologising,

He doesn't look at her and she sits on a tree stump and watches him dig twelve perfect oblong holes one by one. Dirt falls on the mousy girl's face, filling her open mouth, and she wants to tell him to stop. Instead she watches and feels the phantom taste of soil on her tongue.

Eventually he throws down the shovel and retrieves his jacket. He glances at her once and hesitates just a fraction of a second before turning to leave.

"Klaus." She stands and follows him, not knowing what else to do.

He spins and pins her with an angry glare. "What, Caroline?"

"I…" she trails off and then she feels her eyes focus on the ground at his feet as she struggles to hold back the rising bile in her throat. "I had to." the justification she has to cling to for her own sanity's sake comes tumbling out, though he's hardly the one she needs to explain herself to. "They were going to kill Bonnie, I had to stop them."

"Keep telling yourself that sweetheart," his pretty mouth twists mockingly. "It won't make them any less dead"

A wash of guilt rushes over her like a cold wave and she shudders. He smiles a nasty, victorious smile. "Won't undo this bloody expression triangle either."

She hates him. Right now she needs him to step up, to be there for her, to put aside their spat from this morning and prove that he actually cares about her. Instead he's hiding behind a wall of vitriol and sneering condemnation. She focuses on her hate - it certainly tastes less foul in her mouth than her guilt - and shoots back. "And whose fault is that? If you hadn't spitefully slaughtered your own hybrids-"

"So we've a massacre each then," he cuts in with calculated softness. "I suppose we are alike after all."

"I am _nothing_ like you," she snarls.

"No, perhaps not." He makes a show of musing on her words. "I acted in self-defence; those hybrids were plotting to kill me, whereas these poor witches were innocent."

Her eyes widen at the audacity. "Innocent? Seriously? They were going to kill Bonnie!"

"Bonnie, who, if you remember, lured them here to massacre the lot of them for Silas. You saved her the trouble though, didn't you? Ended them all without a moment of hesitation, I'm quite impressed."

"Oh god," she thinks she might throw up as the truth tumbles haphazardly about in her stomach.

"They came to preserve the balance, fight the good fight, and you - you murdered them," he continues as if she hadn't spoken. "One quick stab to kill a dozen; very efficient work Caroline, I must say."

"Oh god, I killed twelve people," she murmurs to herself, eyes flashing over his face before settling on her own hands.

"Indeed you did." He steps close and forces her to look into his eyes. "Perhaps I shouldn't have worried so much about sullying your light. You're as ruthless and bloodthirsty as I am underneath, aren't you? Did you notice how young some of them were? Hmm?"

Her lip trembles and tears flow down her dirty cheeks. "Why are you saying this to me?"

He ignores her. He has no compassion, she doesn't know now how she could have _ever_ thought him worth hers. "Barely out of school, poor things."

"Stop it!" She wishes that sounded more like a command and less like a plea but her voice is cracked and broken with regret and her stomach churns sickeningly.

"Did you enjoy it Caroline?" he asks conversationally, mercilessly. "Holding all those lives in your dainty little hands for a second before you ripped them away; did you savour it?"

She swallows and looks away and he laughs nastily. "I thought so. Perhaps it is _I_ who should be ashamed of being caught with _you_."

Her gaze snaps angrily back to him at that and he smiles a poisonous smile. "Good night my love, sweet dreams."

She closes her eyes against her guilt and his brutal words and when she opens them he's gone and she sits down on the damp earth and breathes in the smell of the soil under her hands. She thinks of the girl with the mouthful of dirt and she cries.

"Caroline," the familiar voice calls to her across the ocean of misery she swims in and she looks up to see him stepping out of the trees looking handsome and concerned and a little like salvation.

"Tyler?" In a moment she's up and in his arms. "Oh my God, Tyler!"

"Hey Care," he murmurs warmly into her neck. "Hey, it's ok."

She pulls away and sighs. "It's not Ty, " she says sadly. "It's really not."

He strokes her hair and she forces a watery smile. She's dreamt of his return so many times, but never once did she imagine it like this: with blood on her hands and doubt in her heart. No, she scolds herself, there is no doubt. Perhaps a few hours ago there might have been. Perhaps then she would have looked at her first love and wondered, just wondered, if maybe in the most secret corner of her heart she hadn't already replaced him.

That doubt is gone now. Klaus' vileness slithers around her body hand-in-hand with her guilt, making her sick and angry. She hates him now so much she can barely pull her mind away from that loathing to focus on the man who should be filling her senses with the joyful rightness of his return.

"Care?" he squeeze her shoulders. "Babe, what is it? Is everything alright?"

She laughs a little manically. "Let's see. Silas is in Mystic Falls trying to end the world, Elena's an emotionless bitch, Bonnie's a basket case, and Klaus, just when I needed him to be decent for once, is being a colossal, unfeeling jerk. On top of that I just killed a whole coven of witches and pretty much handed Silas the keys to the other side. So no," she presses her fingers together as if in prayer and tries to calm her breathing, "nothing is alright."

Tyler pulls away and looks at her questioningly. "You needed Klaus?" he asks and tips his head that way he she remembers so vividly, jaw a little tense, eyes a little suspicious.

"No God, of course not." Her denial sounds forced and tinny in her own ears and the dismissive wave of her hand is wooden, unconvincing. "Seriously, that's what you take from that? Did you not hear the dead witches part?"

"No I heard that part." Tyler looks at her almost coyly from under his lashes. "And thank you for that by the way, I was dreading this massacre most of all."

"What?" she questions dumbly, her mind ahead of her lips, already realising something is terribly wrong here.

"But now I'm more interested in your boyfriend."

"You're not Tyler." She steps back, understanding flaring brightly, terrifyingly, in her mind. "Silas?"

"Smart girl," He smirks playfully as her mind races to process all the implications of his words.

"What do you want with Tyler?" she demands, concern making her bold.

Silas laughs, a perfect replica of Tyler's, and those beautiful dark eyes shine in the moonlight. "Not _that_ boyfriend, babe. I'm talking about the upgrade."

"Klaus?" she gasps and where there should be relief that it's invincible, irredeemable Klaus and not Tyler who's in Silas' sights, there is only fear. She wants to run, vamp speed, to the mansion; wants to bar the door and keep this mind-invading creep away from them.

She glances around for an escape route and when Silas speaks again the accent is rich and sexy and she knows she'll be looking into blue eyes as she turns back to face him. "Your lover's mind is a little harder to read than yours," Silas says with a humoured lift of his lips. "Try as I might, I can't seem to snag the cure's location out of it," he smirks conspiratorially and leans in like they're sharing a tidbit of gossip. "Honestly it's all a bit of a mess in there, I think the boy has issues."

 _Well ain't that the truth,_ she thinks, but instead of derision she feels an inexplicable surge of something fierce and protective. "Leave him alone."

"Gladly, just as soon as he hands over my cure." Silas purses Klaus' full lips in a gesture so disconcertingly familiar her eyes linger briefly on them. "So, my pretty Caroline, we have two options. Option one - you get that cure for me and I leave you, your shabby little gang, and your broken boy toy alone."

Silas lifts his hands from his sides and mimics Klaus' teasing close-lipped smile and raised brows. "Option two," he continues brightly, "you resist me and I unpeel each of them from their skin, prise open their minds and shatter what's left of your collective sanity, starting with the hybrid."

She has no response other than to lift her chin and glare rebelliously at him. She shouldn't care. Seriously, screw Klaus. She'd needed him and he'd had a perfect opportunity to show her some basic human kindness tonight, to show her that he actually cared about her. But he couldn't get over himself and his stupid pride and insecurities for five minutes to be there for her. _Screw Klaus,_ she thinks again without conviction; in the other half of her mind she's already racing a mile a minute to his side.

"Choose carefully, Caroline," Silas advises and steps in close, running a finger down her cheek - Klaus' finger without Klaus' familiar heat. "Or this -" Suddenly a stake is being forced through her rib cage just skimming past her heart. She screams in pain and Silas fixes her with those gorgeous grey-blue eyes she's been weak for since they first shone with admiration for her that day at the ball. He twists the stake and she sags against him. "This will just be the beginning."


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N so I've been a bad bad author and you are well within your rights to shun me here after. But. but but but, i do have an excuse. Moved into my new house (which we haven't finished building quite) and its been mental. Also a nasty bout of The Block :-S**

 **Anyway I hope you can forgive me, the next chapter is already mostly done!**

 **Chapter 7**

She wakes with a rough cough that tears at her throat and a dull ache in her chest. Light presses intrusively against her closed eyes and she groans self-pityingly.

"Hey." Stefan's even tone holds a little more concern and a lot more fatigue than usual, so she forces open her unwilling eyes and focuses blurrily on him.

"Stef?" she croaks as she tries to coax her sluggish brain into remembering what the hell she's doing on Stefan's couch. "What happened?"

"You were attacked," Stefan tells her as he reaches over for a glass of water to hand to her. "Klaus found you in the woods, do you remember anything?"

Klaus. His name pings off her ears and her mind snaps to attention. "Klaus?" she asks with emotion ringing incriminatingly in her voice. "He helped me?"

"Yeah he brought you here."

Klaus helped her, she thinks. After every foul, wounded, hurtful thing he said, still he came back for her and he helped her. She can see him in her mind's eye as he found her bloody and unconscious in the dirt. She can picture how tenderly he'd have lifted her, the words he'd have mumbled as he cradled her against his chest. "Its alright sweetheart," he'd have said. "I've got you love, I've got you."

"Where is he?" she demands, already trying to sit up; instinct, as always, driving her to go to him.

"Ah ah," Stefan pushes her gently back. "He went looking for whoever did this, looking pretty murderous, and I have orders to take care of you."

"No he can't!" This time she does sit up, aware that worry might look a little like panic right now. "Stefan this isn't something he can just rip the head off of. We need a plan, we need to regroup, we have to find him-"

"Caroline," he interrupts and again stops her rising with a firm hand on her shoulder. "Who did this to you?"

She swallows nervously and from his furrowed brow she knows he's already guessed the answer. "Silas. And right now it's Klaus he's after. We need-"

"What the bloody hell have you done to my brother, you manipulative little trollop!"

"Rebekah," Stefan greets the youngest Original's intrusion in his signature long-suffering tone. "What can we do for you?"

Rebekah tips her head and gives Stefan a flash of a fake smile. "It's Caroline I'm here for," she informs him testily. "That little bitch did something to Nik this morning that has him acting even more like a lunatic than usual."

"Rebekah," she drags the other girl's haughty accusing gaze back to her as she speaks. "I haven't seen Klaus since last night."

"At least try and lie convincingly," Rebekah sneers. "My brother spent the whole night off somewhere in a rage and came back raving about father."

"Mikael?" she breaks into Rebekah's rant with her mind racing through a hundred worst-case scenarios.

"Then you showed up," Rebekah continues without acknowledging the interruption. "And the next thing I know he's tearing apart the house and destroying the furniture. Now he's vanished and I want an explanation. Nik's a big enough pain in the arse without some spiteful little prick tease-"

She's offended, but she's also putting together parts of a puzzle in her mind that make a worrying picture. "Rebekah shut up!" she snaps, making the blonde stop short and stare at her in insulted disbelief. "I wasn't at your house this morning just like Tyler wasn't in the woods last night, and Klaus never saw Mikael. It's Silas, he can get in your head and make you see whatever he wants."

"Silas?" Rebekah looks at her questioningly but with no trace of doubt and its strange how being taken seriously makes the whole thing seem terrifyingly real. Part of her, she realises, had hoped to be dismissed. "Bloody hell, that's bad."

"You think?" Fear makes her snippy and sarcastic but Rebekah doesn't seem to care, the Original thinks for a moment then spins on her stilettoed heel and makes for the door.

"Where are you going?" Stefan stops her.

"To find my brother," Rebekah tosses back her hair but the sass of the action is dulled by the deep furrow in her brow.

"Wait. Seriously, Rebekah stop," she calls, her voice rising as the original turns again towards the door. "Silas is dangerous, we need to come with you."

Rebekah rolls her eyes and Stefan gives her a quizzical look. "We do?"

"Yes Stefan, we do. Silas isn't your regular 'villain of the week' bad, he's end the world bad and we need to band together on this. Come on Rebekah, do you even know where to look for Klaus?"

The blonde looks irritated by her bossy tone and places a hand on her hip. "Do _you_?" she challenges.

She bites her lip and nods. "Yeah, I think I do?"

"Bloody hell" Rebekah grumbles as her heel sinks into soft earth. "This is ridiculous. What in God's name would Nik be out here for?"

She doesn't look at the Original as she pushes low branches from her path and answers distractedly. "Clarity."

She hears Rebekah huff behind her, and Stefan moves closer to ask quietly, "You sure Care?"

"Yes, if Klaus has been seeing Mikael then he'll be a mess; he'll be out here getting his head straight, I know he will." She doesn't mention how she knows his patterns , nor that he'll more than likely be doing it on four paws , she just presses on into the forest. She can't begin to acknowledge how worried she is for the hybrid - that's too much like admitting she feels something for him - but she can react, and action has always been her go-to setting for stress.

After a few moments she realises she's alone and a second after that she hears the unmistakable sound of violence a little to her left. "Shit," she mutters and vamps through the scratching branches to find Stefan dangling from Rebekah's iron grip like a spluttering marionette dancing its wooden legged jig in thin air.

"Rebekah!" Fear makes her yell sharp and high-pitched and the youngest Original turns black eyes on her.

"He tried to kill me," she snarls. "He has the white oak."

"What? No he doesn't it's a trick, Silas is-" her words are cut off when another form blurs into the clearing and knocks Stefan from Rebekah's grasp; the two roll together and come up as one, like perfect matches in a mirror. Two pairs of Stefan's soulful eyes look back at them and beside her she hears Rebekah curse under her breath. _Yeah_ she agrees mentally, _shit indeed_.

After that it's a confusing pantomime of violence and fear, they strike at each other and at shadows, she sees Rebekah snarling like a trapped beast and doesn't know if the threat is real or imagined. She stabs Silas, or so she thinks, hiding in Stefan's skin, but it's her friend who cries in pain while the ancient immortal laughs Rebekah's laugh.

Finally, bloodied and panting, and with absolutely no clue which way is up she finds herself alongside the real Original while a matched pair of Stefan Salvatores stare beseechingly at them. Rebekah brandishes a stake. "Which one?" she cries in panic, terrified that the blonde will just stake both to be sure.

"I don't know," Rebakh snaps as both step towards them with palms outstretched innocently. They step back with adrenaline pumping fear though her veins with the erratic rhythm of her heart.

Suddenly a grey-brown blur barrels into the figure on her left sending him rolling away across the soaked earth. The creature steps to its side so it's between her and the downed man and growls menacingly. Stefan - no Silas surely - lifts himself up and looks indecisively at the snarling wolf before disappearing into the trees.

The wolf turns to them, its eyes a fierce yellow, and growls again, more softly this time, almost questioningly. She nods that she's ok and steps towards him, because it can only be him and she's not afraid of him. Even like this he only seeks to protect her.

"Thanks," she says softly and reaches out a tentative hand but he's gone before she can touch him, leaving only Rebekah's "What the hell was that?" ringing in her ears.

"Your brother," she says as she watches the space where his wolf form had stood, the form she'd felt so curious to see just a few days ago. His wolf is small and scrawny compared to Tyler's and the rusty grey of his coat isn't as impressive as Tyler's jet black sheen;yet the power that had emanated from him, that harnessed fierceness that had sent even Silas running, that power was as compelling in wolf form as it was in human. The thought that 'he is beautiful this way' flows like water through her mind bringing with it emotional flotsam from all their previous encounters and surging forward, carrying her helpless towards whichever troubled ocean it leads.

"Get everyone together at the boarding house," she orders, her certainty that she knows what's going on better than any of them carrying conviction into her voice and Rebekah and Stefan, shaken as they are, obey willingly.

"Where are you going?" Stefan asks with concern and she gives him a brief confident smile.

"To get Klaus, I'll see you there."

"Klaus," she calls as she enters. "I know you're here, Klaus, so get your butt out here, we have work to do."

"Caroline," he greets coolly as he appears. "Kindly keep it down love? I still have wolf hearing, you know."

"Yeah," she gives him a crooked rueful smile. "Thank your furry side for the save for me ok?"

He doesn't return her smile, he looks tense and resentful and she sighs inwardly at how nothing is ever easy with him.

"Stefan and Rebekah are getting everyone together at the boarding house," she decides to ignore his obvious bad mood and get to business. "You know, so we can decided what to do about Silas."

He raises an eyebrow affecting a nonchalance she knows he doesn't feel. "Well delightful as that sounds I have no interest in watching your pathetic bunch of do-gooders pretending they have a shot against Silas. Run along and play at heroes, let the grown ups deal with this."

"Seriously? You're going to go all lone ranger when we're up against a bad guy twice your age who can get inside our heads and make us see whatever he wants." She scoffs. "Genius strategy considering Silas can turn our worst fears-"

"I'm not afraid of Silas." His snarl cuts through the air like a blunt blade leaving the edges ragged. "I'm not afraid of anything."

"You're afraid of Mikael," she counters. She can't be gentle with him, although looking at him now with his hair damp and curling from the shower and the clean naïve smell of soap on his skin, a part of her, a part she curses for its weakness, aches to be.

"Mikael's gone and I won't be fooled again." Composure glazes fragilely over his surface, a brittle barrier she has no choice but shatter if she's going to bring him into the fight. If she's going to keep them all safe.

"Fine, well then you're afraid of me. You're afraid of opening up to me like you did the other night." She stabs her hands towards the ground letting the emphatic gesture punctuate her words. "You're afraid that I'll see the real you and I'll hate you anyway."

He draws back, hardness settling in his eyes. "A fear that proved well-founded if you recall."

"Seriously!" Exasperation makes her snap. Sure, she gets that she hurt him, but he can't get over himself for a second to see anyone else's point of view and she's starting to feel more pissed off than compassionate. "I panicked ok? And I lashed out and if you hadn't been acting like such a massive dickwad I would have apologised."

His anger surges up to meet hers and he leans towards her menacingly as he retorts, "I can assure you I would not have accepted it."

"No I guess you wouldn't. Because you are so incredibly narcissistic and insecure that you would rather have people despise you on your terms than reject you on their own." She shakes her head and feels disdain curl her lips. "God you're pathetic."

"Don't walk away from me," he vamps into her path as she moves to storm out and escape the rage that crawls under her skin whenever he pushes her buttons like this.

"I should have walked away ages ago," she all but snarls.

"And yet you did not," he counters. "In spite of the many opportunities I gave you to do just that. To spare you my influence in spite of my own desires."

She rolls her eyes at the blatant disingenuousness of his words. "Oh yeah sure, you're just so noble."

"I was protecting y-"

"You were protecting yourself." She doesn't let him finish, she's had about enough of his bullshit for today. "I was so wrong at the ball wasn't I? You understand people just fine, but you're too much of a coward to let anyone, let me, understand you."

"You couldn't begin to understand me girl, you're just a child."

"So are you," she fires back in exasperation, all thoughts of reasoning with him lost to her own anger. "Jesus, you're like a toddler with your tantrums and your daddy issues-"

He roars and surges forward pressing her against the wall with his forearm across her throat. She's not scared of him, she's certain now on every level that he will never really hurt her and she can live just fine with her windpipe crushed so she lifts her eyebrows as if to say "yep just like that" and he drops her, runs a hand over his face, and turns away.

She feels his anger leave the room in a rush, hadn't realised until she felt it go how it had filled every square inch of air around them. In the empty space it leaves she presses the advantage. "This is big," she says firmly. "Like end the world big, and we don't have time for one of your episodes. So just get the hell over it already and turn around."

He does, and he looks beaten, beaten by the hardness of her truth. Beaten by the length of the night and Silas' brutal mind games. Just beaten. Tenderness swells in her stomach flipping her from angry to gentle in the space of the one shuddering breath she can't keep in. She steps towards him and he just waits, his head canting to watch her with eyes the colour of sorrow and the ocean. When her fingers reach to his side to tangle with his he looks down at them and turns their joined hands over to watch his own thumb scrape across her knuckles.

 _He's broken_ she thinks. The thought isn't new, but she hasn't felt so vividly before just how damaged he is, how poorly equipped he is to handle Silas' special brand of nasty. "What did Silas say to you?" she asks, aware that her voice is low and intimate, and that they are standing very close together in this moment. "When he was me?"

She sees uncertainty in his expression; his mouth moves but he doesn't speak, then he straightens a little and firmly pushes the question back at her. "What did he say to you?"

She rolls her eyes in annoyance- why does she always have to be the mature one? Why even when she reaches for him can't he meet her halfway? "He said he'd hurt you, ok." She snaps indignantly, how quickly she pendulums from gentleness to anger with this man, this delicate brutal man she can't stand half the time but couldn't bear to even imagine destroyed. "Apparently that's what I'm afraid of, not my-"

In a flash she's pressed against the wall again but this time his lean body presses her back and his mouth slants urgently against hers. She kisses back, thinks she will always be helpless to do anything else; the feel of him is intoxicating, addictive like a drug with that same exhilarating buzz and that same knowing of how much you risk by taking it.

He pulls back and looks at her after kissing her just long enough to make her feel fuzzy-headed and disoriented when he breaks away. "He said he'd hurt you," she repeats in a small whisper and lets that fear Silas saw so clearly show in her voice.

Klaus glances down then back to meet her gaze. "He already did," he replies in a tone soft enough to match her own. "He looked at me with your eyes and in your voice told me that I could not protect you, that I had failed you, that I am nothing to you."

She shakes her head and lifts a hand to his bicep, falling once again into the drowning waters of caring for him. "I didn't say those things."

He laughs, a short mirthless sound that breaks harshly against her ears, a stark contrast to the tenderness swirling in her chest. "Those words did not seem ill-placed on your lips, sweetheart."

"Yeah well." There's no come back to that, he's right of course. "Shut up." She pulls him back and kisses him again until he groans into her mouth and runs one hand up the back of her leg to hook her thigh over his hip. God the way he touches her. The purposeful self-assurance that usually graces his every movement morphs into something urgent and instinctive that makes her feel like the most desirable creature on the planet.

His mouth feels amazing against hers, the kisses open-mouthed and hungry, teeth and tongues rough and messy as they clash erratically together. She's moaning, she hears the pitch of her own desire rise as he presses between her legs and grinds against her.

It's too much. "Jesus," she gasps as she rips her mouth from his and lets the intensity of her lust overflow into hissed, clipped cursing. "Fuck, Klaus." The hard Ks clank together in the charged air around them as he trails wet kisses down her throat and soothes the air with a low murmured "Caroline" against her skin.

His hand finds its way under her shirt to knead her breasts through her bra and she presses her chest greedily towards him. "Please," she begs senselessly, "Klaus."

He pulls away and looks into her face and she can see the uncertainty that wars with the desire in his eyes. He wants her. God he always wants her so much, but she can tell he's on the brink of pulling away again. _Not this time mister,_ she thinks determinedly and uses the only strategy she has to keep him there; she picks a side in his internal battle and reaches a hand down to rip open his jeans and take him roughly in her hand.

One thousand years old and still just a man, he groans helplessly at her touch and she knows her side has won, thrills all through her body at the victory. _He couldn't deny her now for anything_ she thinks as he grabs her thighs and hoists her up against the wall. It's not how she pictured their first time, hard against a wall with their clothes still on and his big empty bed waiting neglected upstairs. She wants to be in that bed with him, their bodies naked against the expensive cotton, but if they move he'll think, and if he thinks he'll stop. She finds she can't bear for him to stop.

Her skirt bunches around her waist, exposing her long pale thighs that contrast so prettily with the dark navy of his t-shirt, and she watches in transfixed anticipation as he pulls aside her knickers and explores the wetness he finds there with bold, deft fingers. He swears in a harsh, guttural language she doesn't recognise then tips his head up to claim her mouth again.

She likes this position; this is the way she feels with him. Elevated, high up on a pedestal of his esteem with him below her reaching up. She feels powerful, she feels like _the one_ and it's everything she wants.

She awkwardly shifts so she can guide him towards her entrance, knows that she's rushing this. Knows that this is not how he wants it, that he would want their first time to be perfect, to dazzle her with a thousand years of skill, to be in control, to have total surrender.

She wants just this. She wants their reservations crumbling before the urgency of their desire. She wants his urgent needy groan as she angles herself so that the tip of him touches her wetness. "Klaus please," she begs in a voice that's pure command and he obeys.

He pulls away from her mouth and looks into her eyes as he pushes smoothly inside her. Stillness. A moment of utter stillness surrounds them, bodies connected and frozen in that instant of completion. They hold each other's gazes for long breathless seconds before she sees emotion swirl in the blue vortex in his eyes and he exhales sharply, that quick rasping exhale that he does when emotion overwhelms him.

He says she couldn't know him and perhaps he's right, perhaps a thousand years of history and bloodshed makes him truly unknowable. But she thinks he's wrong, that she seems to know him far better than she should. She knows all his tells; those little cracks in his ugly posturing and cruel defence. The tiny chinks of light in his dark armour.

She brings up her hand to touch his face, skates the fingertips lightly over his cheekbone and down across his lips. She knows his face so well now too, knows intimately the long curve of his lashes and full lines of his mouth. Those accents of the feminine that only enhance his handsomeness. The moment stretches out almost into tenderness, but they're coming together after weeks, maybe months of their own unique brand of foreplay, and lust pulls irresistibly at their bodies.

He moves inside her and she's lost, hurtling into the abyss of desire headfirst. She kisses him roughly, forces his lips apart and invades his mouth, sucking at his tongue and making him growl and thrust purposefully inside her.

She crosses her ankles behind his back, caging him as if afraid he'll pull away, and tangles her fingers in his damp hair pulling his mouth harder against hers. He holds her effortlessly with one hand cradling her ass and the other grasping behind her neck possessively. The rough denim of his open jeans rubs against her as he drives into her, stimulating her almost beyond endurance as his hands travel over her body squeezing her breasts and behind with a bruising force that makes her thrum with pleasure.

"Fuck," he gasps when her lips leave his to trail wetly over his cheek to his ear.

He feels so good inside her and she can hear herself grunting like an animal as their rhythm quickens and their bodies pull taut as longbows, every nerve at breaking point, every sinew quivering in anticipation.

"Oh god," she's so close that she's almost angry in her desperation for him, her open palm slapping down against his shoulder in a stinging demand for release.

He complies, takes them down in a blur of vampiric speed; spins and slams her spine into the hardwood floor and drives mercilessly into her making her mewl and gasp.

She claws at his back, nails sharp in the soft skin, and the faint scent of his blood taints the air. The always ravenous monster under her skin pushes to the surface making the veins beneath her eyes buzz and crackle; he pulls back slightly without breaking rhythm and takes in her red-eyed hunger and without a word he tips his head to the side and offers her the pale column of his throat.

And God help her, she bites him. Vaguely, somewhere beneath the lust and the hunger and the vivid memory of the intoxicating taste of his ancient blood she's aware she shouldn't, that she's already taking too much from him. Somewhere within she knows that everything she takes that she can't give in return will only make walking away from this harder, will make him less willing to let her go.

She doesn't think about it though, she's rocketing towards her destination with his blood pouring down her throat and his cock pistoning deep inside her. She withdraws her fangs, clumsily tearing the skin to thrash underneath him, hips thrusting erratically in a quest to reach the orgasm building just out of reach in her belly, throwing them out of the building rhythm. He growls a reprimand, pins her hips to the floor and crushes his mouth against hers in a gesture so uncompromisingly masculine and with a strength so vast and unyielding that she falls apart before it, her scream muffled in his mouth as she comes.

He follows her, hot and wet inside her and pulls away from their broken kiss to praise her against the skin of her throat. She barely comes down. She's been waiting for this so long and the feel of him still rock hard inside her as he kisses her neck makes her undulate invitingly against him.

"Bed," she whispers in his ear. "Now."

In a moment he has them on their feet and stumbling together between kisses up the arcing staircase towards his room, awkwardly shedding clothes as they go, uncoordinated and incongruously human after the preternatural fierceness of their coupling.

At his door he presses her with human force against the wall and kisses her deeply while he fumbles for the knob. Finally the door opens and she turns them and backs him, unresisting, into the room, her hunger for him barely touched by the frantic orgasm they just shared. But in the slight quieting that follows it she finds her need turn to something so much softer, so much worse. She surprises him with a hard shove to the chest and he loses his balance with a curse.

She's laughing when they hit the bed with a slight bounce, laughing and pressing him down so she can take him into herself again without a moment's hesitation, grinning at the eagerness with which he sits up and reaches for the clasp of her bra. Beneath her is a creature, a thousand years old, who's done everything and been everywhere, who has suffered and caused suffering in equal measure for a millennium and yet right now he's just a boy eagerly making love to a girl.

She can't name it anything but that. She's fantasised about fucking him so many times and had already justified that half-planned sin within her mind; inescapable, carnal, all body, no heart. But this now in his bed, this is different, a greater and a lesser sin; this is greedy hands and speaking eyes and kisses that surge up from your chest like fireworks.

In his lap like this, with his mouth exploring her throat and his hands mapping her hips as he moves inside her she can't deny the connection between them that she'll hate herself for later when she faces her friends or watches her ceiling in the dark. She'll no doubt beat herself up for giving in, for wanting him just more than she wants to do the right thing.

But not now. Now she is lost in this, in him, in them together. "My love," his voice thrills her, his love spoken into her skin empowers and terrifies her and makes her hips surge against his in response. She can't be with him, not really, and they both know it. She's good and he's just, just awful. But nevertheless in this moment she can't imagine ever wanting to be with anyone else.

"Klaus," she speaks her love in his name, that love she can never, ever, let herself feel. "God Klaus, yes!"

She throws back her head and quickens her pace, losing herself in sensation for a while before his hands travel up to take her face between his palms and pull her back down into a kiss that burns right through her body. He offers her everything in that kiss, throws down his body and his wounded soul before her. Asks for nothing back, only that she take it. She can't and he knows it but he offers it anyway and despite herself she loves him for it.

He rolls them so he's between her legs again, his weight settling over her and his lean, strong arms span either side of her head as he kisses her. She hooks her own hands around his shoulders and clings to him, opens her legs and mouth wide, inviting him in as deep as he can go.

They kiss like that, like lovers, until he breaks the connection of their mouths to pepper her cheek and throat with kisses. "Caroline," he says her name like a benediction as he lays offerings of wet kisses at her altar. "My love."

Her orgasm builds slowly and with it a drowning sense of sorrow. He pours so much, more than she imagines he realises, into this coming together. Pours in so muchfeeling that she feels its press down on her like a warm heavy blanket. Pours out all his loneliness too, a loneliness as unrelenting as the centuries he's lived, so that it seeps from every pore and evaporates against her skin.

In this moment she wants to be the salve to the pain of that loneliness, she wants to be the one to bring light into the darkness of his world. To smash down the walls he thinks protect him but only serve to keep him trapped in his own unhappiness.

She can't, she knows she can't. She is too young and too righteous still, despite what she is, to throw away her morality for him in all his wickedness. But knowing this doesn't stem the swelling sadness pressing into the back of her eyes so that she has to close them against the onset of tears.

He runs his tongue along her collarbone making her moan as her body begins to clench around him and her breath shortens. She wants to say his name, offer it to him like a gift, but she fears it will come out broken and choked so she bites her lip as her pleasure and her sadness link hands and rise up within her. One of his hands is in her hair, firm but gentle, and the other reaches beneath them to angle her so that each thrust of his hips grinds against her clit until she's tumbling over the edge and her sorrow silently breaks the banks of her eyes and wets her cheeks.

"My love." He comes inside her with a final firm thrust and she feels him smile against her neck briefly before lifting his head to run his cheek across her own.

"Caroline?" he sits back suddenly on his heels, leaving her feeling cold and empty.

She wants to tell him it's ok, to explain away her wet cheeks with a smile but she chokes and gives a little strangled sob instead. She reaches for him as he moves away and shakes her head mutely. His expression breaks her heart, just a moment ago she'd felt his smile against her skin and now he's drawing a thin mask of impassiveness over his devastated eyes.

"Klaus," she manages as he takes another step away, eyes slipping away from her face.

"I suppose we're late," he cuts in in a brittle voice, expression fragile. "Feel free to use the shower," he offers, looking anywhere but at her face.

She pulls the sheet over her breasts and sits up. "Klaus I, er, thanks."

He nods and heads towards the door. There must be something she can say to make him stop, she thinks, but all she has is his name in a whisper one more time.

He doesn't turn around but he stops and tension drops out of his shoulders, making him look a little defeated and tragic, framed naked in the doorway. "I am a monster Caroline," he says quietly and then after a small, determined, breath and without turning to face her. "But I will do right by you."

Then he's gone leaving her faint "I know" to barely cause a ripple in the air where he had stood.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N Ok just to prepare you, you're going to hate me. You'll read this chapter and you'll think. I hate her, she's a very mean woman. Her and her fic are just the worst.**

 **But, but but but, please remember that things have to hit bottom before they get better right, that's the joy of the angst.**

 ***looks hopeful* please don't hate too hard**

 **As always we praise the mighty garglyswoof for her editing, comments and support**

 **Chapter 8**

"Listen," she starts determinedly as they walk side-by-side towards the boarding house. "I know it could all be kinds of weird now, after, er, you know-" She clamps down hard on the urge to ramble and glances sideways at his impassive features. "But we have a major villain to defeat and I hope we can, you know, work together and…"

Part of her hates this silent version of him, but it certainly does make it easier to get this stuff out without his interruptions. "And I hope that you and I, that we're still friends, not that we were really friends before but… I guess I hope we are kinda still whatever we were."

She looks at him hopefully and he tips his head to the side and gives a definite nod. She smiles awkwardly at him and continues on her way with him padding along beside her with silent grace. She feels like something from a movie, some sort of queen of the forest with all nature's fierceness at her command. She snorts at her own foolish thoughts and he glances briefly at her before bounding ahead to stand at the Salvatores' door.

"Ok," she says as she grabs the handle. "Here goes!"

Stefan and Rebekah have gotten everyone together, as promised. Damon sits next to a bored-looking Elena and once again her heart breaks to see the shell of her friend. Bonnie looks pale and nervous but her expression also holds just a hint of that old resolve that always made her the strongest of all of them. Even Matt is here, seated next to Bonnie and glancing resentfully around the room.

She gives them all a tight smile; from behind her Klaus leaps forward into view with a sharp growl and comes to stand up on the high table behind the unoccupied couch just in front of Damon and Elena.

"Christ," Damon splutters and seems to climb backwards in his seat, his arms wrapping instinctively around Elena who watches without reaction. "What the fuck is that?"

If she's amused by Damon's panic - and she's not saying she is - then she doesn't let it show. She just steps up alongside Klaus and lays a hand against the coarse fur of his neck. "All clear?" she asks and the wolf looks around his deep growling making every occupant of the room draw back just a little .

Klaus turns his amber eyes on her and nods. She gives him a small smile and he hops off the table; the sound of cracking bones fills the room. She's never witnessed the change in reverse before. It seems to go a little easier than turning into a wolf, or perhaps Klaus is just practiced at the transition. The fur along his back melts away, exposing his pale skin as the spine lengthens and straightens and his bowed head returns to its human shape.

The room watches in a mixture of fascination and fear as the claws shorten and the limbs pull out smoothly and he comes to stand naked before them. He rolls his shoulders and his muscles move enticingly beneath alabaster skin. She fights the urge to swallow; she'd known this was coming and is determined to remain unaffected by his nakedness despite the vivid memories ricocheting about in her brain at the sight of him.

She's pretty pleased with the impassive expression she manages to maintain until she catches Damon's narrow-eyed gaze. In her determination not to react to him she realises she's actually ended up looking pretty suspicious. Bonnie and Matt are looking anywhere but at the naked hybrid with their faces curled into matching masks of disgust, while Elena watches him with clear appreciation and Stefan looks stoically at his face. The only people in the room unaffected by Klaus' nudity are his sister, because surely they come from a time when family nudity was common place and she's seen him like this many times before, and her. _Damn it,_ she thinks, reading the suspicion in Damon's gaze and belatedly trying to manufacture an awkward expression.

Fortunately Elena draws the elder Salvatore's attention. "Wow," she says with a slight whistle. "Nice!"

Klaus turns dark eyes on the doppelganger but it's her that Elena addresses. "Very nice. You should really take that for a test drive Care," she suggests in a friendly mocking tone. "Or maybe _I_ will."

"I'd rather chop it off love," Klaus retorts with a smirk. "No offence."

Elena's raised eyebrow and passive expression tells them all she's incapable of taking any, and the brunette just shrugs and starts playing with her phone.

She gathers her composure again and throws the duffle bag on her shoulder at Klaus who retrieves his jeans and slips them on. Briefly she registers the fact he's not wearing any underwear - _he hadn't been earlier either,_ she thinks, and wonders if he ever does.

"Caroline?" Stefan's voice draws her attention and she gives herself a mental shake and a firm internal reprimand; _not the time Caroline_. "This might need some explaining."

"Yes, yes it does." She and Klaus share a look and he nods, giving her permission to lead. "Right, so I assume Stefan and Rebekah filled you all in on our fun run-in with Silas?"

The others nod and worry settles on the room like a sudden fog. "Yeah," she smiles ruefully. "Silas had us in knots, we very nearly all killed each other out there. His illusions are perfect, we can't possibly fight him when he can so easily have us all fighting each other."

She pauses and Damon cuts in impatiently. "Granted, Blondie," he says, his voice as sharp as his watchful eyes. "But it doesn't explain why your boyfriend's shedding on my Persian rug."

She resolutely ignores the goading in that question but Klaus' eyes flash to her when Damon calls him her boyfriend and she stiffens slightly under his gaze.

"Back off Damon, you need us here to make sure we're all who we say we are. We figured out that his wolf is immune to Silas' tricks. Klaus can see him, for real. We-"

"Lot's of 'we' and 'us' in there, Carebear. Don't tell me you've finally gone team Klaus?"

She feels the hybrid's eyes slide away from her as he throws himself with deliberate casualness onto the empty sofa. She wants to reach out to him, hates the distance she's felt between him since he pretty much ran away from her earlier, so she gives Damon a withering look and comes to sit beside him. Though she sits straight while he lounges and keeps a respectable distance between them, she's certain he won't miss the expression of solidarity.

"Hmm, well as Klaus is a thousand year old unkillable hybrid and the only person who can see what Silas really looks like, I'm gonna say yes. We'd all be idiots not to be team Klaus right now."

Damon's jaw ticks but its Rebekah, sounding typically impatient, who asks the obvious question. "So what does he look like?"

Klaus sits forwards, places his elbows on his knees and makes a small gesture towards Stefan with his hand. "Like that" he says simply and she feels herself frown. Back in his house before he'd turned he'd told her, stiffly and without looking away from his drink, that he'd been able to see Silas' true face and she'd just taken him at his word. Now he's telling them he only saw what they all saw? She thinks she's going to look like a total idiot for this in a moment.

"We all saw Stefan, Nik," Rebekah says but she's clearly asking a question rather than expressing a lack of faith. She imagines the youngest Mikaelson has plenty of reasons to trust Klaus when it comes to matters of war.

The hybrid shakes his head and purses his lips. "Not the facsimile he showed _you_ lot." He sits up straight and looks hard at Stefan. "Hair a little longer," he makes a gesture with the flat of his hand just above his own shoulder then runs his fingers over his own cheek. "Scar just below the eye. Not a copy of Stefan, no, but undeniably that face."

They all stare at one another as the implications filter through each of their minds. "So that means-" Elena starts but Damon cuts her off, looking into the middle distance.

"Stefan's a doppelganger," he sounds shaken by the revelation.

"Silas' doppelganger to be precise," Klaus confirms. "And I'd be willing to bet that his precious Amara looks just- like- that-" he sounds out the final words deliberately as he points at Elena, and Damon's expression turns a little nauseous. Klaus gives a sly smile and clasps his hands together in a parody of concern. "Oh I wouldn't worry about it mate," he says sounding sincere and supportive and part of her laughs along with him as he taunts Damon. "It's only destiny."

"Well I don't bloody know," Klaus snaps, silencing the clamour for answer that builds in the wake of this revelation. What does it mean for them? they want to know. How can they use it to defeat Silas? "But you've got a Bennett witch and the dear departed Professor's considerable library on the subject so I suggest you all toddle off and put your minds to it."

He rises to go but Stefan stops him. "Klaus, Shane's books are at Bonnie's house." He doesn't say the rest, that its too dangerous right now for any of them to go, that the Originals are the only ones with any kind of chance against Silas, but Klaus seems to understand anyway and flashes his eyes up to the ceiling.

"Fine" he snarls and turns to go. "But keep an eye on each other, I don't fancy spending the whole night breaking bones every time you lot lose track of who's who." He glances briefly at her before he goes and she bites her lip and tries to ignore the urge to chase after him as he and his sister leave them to their work.

She escapes into the kitchen half an hour later despite Klaus' warning, craving a quiet moment to think, but the universe isn't about to grant her that and Damon slithers in behind her. "What?" she snaps as she spins to glare at him.

He raises his hands, though he doesn't manage to look innocent. His eyes are too calculating by far. "Your honey said stay together."

She gives him a withering look and starts making coffee for the long night they have ahead of them. "Go away Damon."

"Hey, I just want to know where we all stand. See if you're finally letting resident evil sample the goods-"

"Jesus, Damon," she cuts in, running her hands through her hair. She could really do without Damon's unerring perception right now.

"Are you?"

"What?"

"Letting him sample?"

"God _no_ of course not." She has no problem lying to Damon - it feels far more natural than telling the abusive doppelganger-obsessed prick the truth anyway. "Klaus and I are not a thing ok?"

"You sure about that Blondie?" Damon leans on the counter seeming unwilling to let his theory go so easily. "The two of you had something going on in there. And I make it my business to know anything that might potentially get me or my girl killed."

"I said we're not," she snaps. "Now go away."

Damon's eyes narrow, "Still Tyler's girl then?" he presses. "Still want him back?"

She grits her teeth and tries not to look away as she tells a lie she still wants so much to be the truth. "Of course, it's all I want."

She must sound convincing because Damon shrugs, seemingly satisfied, and wanders over to help her set a tray with cups and cream.

Klaus and Rebekah are back when they re-enter the living room and a large pile of Professor Creepy's research sits on the table along with a laptop and a box of dusty grimoires. She catches the hybrid's eyes as she sets the tray down and for a moment she thinks she sees pain hiding just beneath the surface before he looks awkwardly away. _God they're being so obvious,_ she thinks, and deliberately turns her back on the Originals.

"Well, have fun," Klaus says suddenly in a falsely jovial tone. "I have some business to attend to, I trust you'll bring me answers soon. Until then, keep each other in sight, don't wander alone and don't trust me unless you actually see me turn into a wolf."

He leaves without catching her eye and she tells herself she's not bothered, but part of her can't just leave things so awkward and weird. Long after midnight she breaks and sends him a text, spending a good ten minutes writing and deleting it before she decides on simple and jokey.

"No progress on Silas," it reads. "Damon's freaking about the E/S destined lovers thing though. LOL"

Once she sends it she wishes earnestly she hadn't added the LOL- seriously what had she been thinking - the man's a thousand? He doesn't respond and the frequency with which she checks her phone draws not only Damon's but also his brother's attention. Stefan leans over, glances at the phone and asks in that frowning un-pushy way of his. "Everything ok?"

She hits him with a hundred mega watts of fake smile. "Sure!"

By morning her phone's still empty despite the "Hey, you ok?" she sent in the early hours and there's an insecure teenager just beneath the surface of the powerful vampire she's become that's wringing her hands and itching to blow up his phone until he responds. She doesn't get him, surely he'd want to talk about what happened, she knows _she_ does. They need to clear the air and make sure they both know where they stand, he'd seemed pretty affected yesterday and now nothing?

Bonnie and Matt's human bodies give out before breakfast and she finds them both sleeping on couches in the parlour. Damon is arguing with Stefan and Elena is showering. She checks her phone one last time then grabs her bag and heads across town.

"Hey," she calls as she enters the Mikaelson mansion. "Klaus?"

He's shirtless as he strolls in and the morning light on his pale skin catches her attention, briefly making her lose track of her thoughts.

"Caroline," he greets neutrally. "Wandering alone?"

She shrugs and goes for a cheeky, winning smile that he returns with a small upturn of his lips. "I promise I'm not Silas."

He gives her a bored look and goes far enough into the transition that he's on all fours with elongated jaws and fur covered claws when he pulls out of it. She marvels for a moment at the exquisite control he has over his form then clears her head with a sharp shake and grins. "And nor are you, obviously."

He nods and pulls on a shirt looking disconcertingly indifferent. "What can I do for you?" he asks and she feels her smile falter.

"I thought we should talk."

He smiles now but it's as shallow as a puddle. "Of course, I'm a little busy at the moment but yes, we should talk soon."

"Right," she replies uncertainly. She'd prepared herself for a pretty intense encounter this morning and his relaxed attitude confuses her. "Do you wanna grab-"

"Yeah" he cuts in with a nod and another saccharine smile. "Sure. Sorry Caroline but I really am a bit tied up right now." He places a hand lightly in the middle of the back and turns her back towards the door. "I'll call you soon."

Realisation hits her like a fist out of nowhere. She's played this scene before back when she was human; she'd never thought she'd be playing it again especially not with him. She stops and turns angrily on him.

"Wow, seriously? You'll call me?" she feels her eyes are wide and disbelieving.

"Of course." He doesn't drop his mask of sincerity but keeps moving them towards the exit. "It's just not a good time, you know with Silas. Once it's all blown over, we should definitely do something."

"Oh my god." She jerks away from his hand on her back and spins to face him, her hands running through her hair. "You dick."

"Sweetheart," he says placatingly and she wants very much to kick his insincere ass right now. "Calm down."

"No, Jesus, don't you tell me to calm down you freaking asshole." She shakes her head and presses her palms together. "You know, I thought you were a lot of things Klaus," she tells him with a disappointed shake of her head, "but I never thought you were this guy."

She storms out and he doesn't follow her. Not that she'd expected him to, but part of her had hoped he would, the same part that had kept texting Jack Sullivan for days when he'd blown her off after they'd hooked up behind the bleachers a few weeks before Elena's parents died.

But she's not that girl anymore and she won't be made a fool of again. She tells herself he's just another jerk and she doesn't care, but her eyes are stinging with humiliated tears and hurt are digging about in her chest as she walks away with her head held stiffly high. She had actually thought he loved her, that for the first time she was the entire focus of someone's world, that maybe this time she was the one. _No!_ She crushes the thought, she is not that girl anymore and she was never his anyway.

By the time she gets back to the boarding house, _with her absence having gone unnoticed of course,_ she thinks self-pityingly, Bonnie has finally found a way to use Stefan's doppelganger connection to Silas against the ancient.

Klaus arrives with Rebekah shortly after and she glares her hate at him as he strolls in with that entitled swagger of his that she used to think was sexy but today just makes her blood boil.

The plan is simple in a way; Silas' immortality is tied to the existence of his doppelgangers. Without them, there is an imbalance that nature cannot allow. So, in theory, if they can break that connection they can undo his immortality.

Bonnie's hands tremble over the grimoire on her lap as she explains the unlinking spell she found in one of Shane's ancient texts that she plans to cast using Stefan's blood. The only complication? They'll also need Silas' blood to complete the spell.

Stefan takes a deep breath and looks at Klaus. "None of us stand a chance," he says. "Silas will kill us before we get anywhere near his blood."

Klaus purses his lips and raises his eyebrows. "So, you're suggesting I take on Silas alone while you lot, what? Wait here in safety and in possession of the very spell you could use to unlink yourselves from my sire line, and allow you once again to plot my death?" He points dramatically around the room. "Perhaps you see this as an opportunity to rid yourselves of not one, but two immortal enemies."

She rolls her eyes at his dramatics and he notices and glares at her. "Am I wrong to expect betrayal from any one of them?"

"Maybe if you didn't treat people like shit you wouldn't have to worry about everyone betraying you," she spits. She should be more cautious; with Damon already suspicious and Elena smirking knowingly at them, she should contain her contempt.

She finds that she can't.

Klaus' jaw ticks and he looks like he's about to speak. She doesn't let him. "I'll go."

"Don't be ridiculous," Klaus' voice is clipped and his expression tight as he demands with his eyes that she let it go.

"No." She's aware she's being rash, allowing the hurt of rejection to make her act incredibly foolishly, but she can't seem to stop herself. "You wanted to share the risk? Fine, I'll come."

The hybrid stands and she takes a step forward and tips her chin challengingly.

"Oh for-" Rebekah comes to Klaus' side. "A baby vamp is worse than useless, Nik would just have to protect you. I'll go. Once we're rid of Silas maybe Elijah will hand over the bloody cure."

Klaus, who'd been staring her down tears his gaze away, turning suddenly towards his sister. "Honestly Rebekah, this ludicrous notion again? You'd be a miserable human and you know it."

"You're just being mean," Rebekah accuses brattishly. "You just don't want me to leave you."

"I don't want you to die, sister." Klaus says and the words ring with so much emotion and history the whole room seems to pause at the sound and hang on Rebekah's response.

The blonde reaches out carefully for her brother's hand.

"It's not your choice, Nik." The siblings look solemnly at one another for a long moment before Bonnie breaks the silence.

"I'm sorry but it's not yours either, Rebekah," the witch says, wringing her hands in her lap. "For this to work we need a human doppelganger. Stefan has to take the cure."

Silence sweeps through the room as everyone processes the implications - who will lose and who will gain. Klaus, who keeps his beloved sister and loses a chance for hybrids, speaks first. "I'll call Elijah," he says and moves to leave. Before he does he places his hands on Rebekah's shoulders and looks gently into her devastated face, "I am sorry, little sister."

Stefan resists of course, he wants the cure for Elena so much, wants to turn her back into the girl that loved him. They're arguing about it when Klaus walks back in.

"I'll make you a deal," he says leaning against the doorframe. "Get your pretty doppelganger off the vervain and I'll compel her to turn it back on. All I ask is you hand over the spell that can unlink me from my sire line. I do rather enjoy the sense of safety that comes from knowing my enemies can't kill me without dying themselves."

Stefan sits heavily and buries his face in his hands. Poor Stefan, backed into a corner; save them all from Silas and lose his Elena, although part of her suspects that even the cure would not have brought her back to him. "Ok," he mumbles into his palms, and for a moment Klaus looks genuinely sympathetic.

"I shall retrieve Silas' blood," he says, his voice almost gentle. He leans down and firmly grasps Stefan's shoulder. "It may not feel like it now Stefan, but your happy ending starts today, old friend."

She stands and he rounds on her. "You will stay here, where it is safe," he commands and strides out, leaving her fuming.

She can't resist going after him, because if there's one thing you can rely on from Caroline Forbes it's that she will call you on your shit.

"Wow, so now suddenly you care?" She sounds bitchy even to herself.

"Caroline," his tone is full of warning but she doesn't heed it, never has when it comes to him.

"No really, I'm curious, do you give a shit or not?" Her hands find her hips and she knows she's all petulance and bitterness right now. "It'd be nice to know if this Silas stuff gets ugly."

Klaus sighs tiredly. "Caroline, you don't understand."

"No I don't," she shoots back warming up to the argument. "Because one minute you're promising to do right by me and the next you're blowing me off like the morning-after douchebag from hell. Which in case you didn't know is the opposite of doing right by someone. Now you care if I'm safe, so-"

"Caroline!" he cuts her off and takes her face in his hands, his gaze firm and commanding her to be silent. "I need to get the blood of the world's first immortal, I haven't time to talk about this. But don't worry." He gives a small rueful smile and holds her gaze with eyes so immeasurably sad that she can almost believe she's looking right through his irises and into the vast loneliness of his long life. One hand leaves her hair and his fingertips trail gently, so close to lovingly across her cheekbone that she has to swallow down the thick feeling in her throat. "All your questions will be moot soon enough."

He returns as a wolf hours later, fur matted with his own blood and mouth full of Silas'. Once it's in Bonnie's possession he turns back, exhaustedly tugs on his jeans and collapses on the Salvatores' couch. She's still mad as all hell with him sure, but she's also a soft-hearted creature and he looks so vulnerable and his wounds heal so slowly that she reluctantly fetches him a few blood bags. He skates his thumb over her knuckles as he takes them.

The others go to prepare the spell but she lingers, too confused to simply let it go. She perches on the couch and tries to think of something to say. "Elijah brought the cure, Stefan's human."

He nods slowly. "Good" he says. "Stefan may not believe it, but few deserve nor need this chance as much as he."

Yeah, she's angry with him and she doesn't understand anything at the moment but he's right about that and she thinks that he cares about Stefan, he truly does. In spite of everything he still considers Stefan a friend and Klaus has a sort of twisted loyalty, she supposes, to those he cares for.

 _Does he care for her?_ she thinks and her mind turns in on itself like a coiling snake, slithering around the question she thought she'd figured out until he decided to sleep with her then treat her like a leper. Their conversation from earlier chips away at her flint-hard resentment and she asks abruptly, "What did you mean moot?"

"Sweetheart," he tries to sit up then seems to reconsider and flops back, throwing one arm over his eyes. "Give a bloke a minute to recover won't you?"

"No."

She sees his lips twitch into a smile and she's reminded of the reason she ended up in his bed in the first place. In all the drama she'd forgotten about that shared humour and mutual understanding that makes him such damn good company, that makes them fit so well despite all the reasons they should never be together.

He uncurls himself and leans forward, his bare, blood-covered, chest suddenly unnervingly close, but when he reaches for her she doesn't retreat. His filthy hands skate up her arms to grasp her shoulders and the look on his face makes her think that he might want to kiss her.

Doubt and confusion are difficult and tiring, but anger is easy, so she sets her jaw and prepares the cutting barb she'll throw at him when she turns her head away from the kiss. But he doesn't try to kiss her, instead he lays his forehead against hers, turns his thumb over her collar bone in that way she's unable to associate with anything other than affection, and whispers, "Goodnight Caroline," with so much exhausted sadness that all she can do is watch mutely as he drags his body off the couch and makes for the door.

"Trouble in paradise?" Elena asks snidely when she joins the others.

"Shut up."

"Aww-" Elena looks vindictive and she wonders if that isn't an emotion of sorts. "Did the nasty hybrid dump you?"

She shakes her head and ignores her old friend but Elena isn't done making trouble just yet and something malicious and knowing glints in the brunette's eyes. "Poor Care, another guy running out on you. Do you think it's because you're so clingy or just a terrible lay?"

Sharp, worried glances ping pong about the room, bouncing off each of her friends until they're all looking at her. "Care, you didn't?" Bonnie asks in exactly the same tone she put the same question to Elena not so long ago when the doppelganger confessed to sleeping with Damon. The recycled accusation peeves her, _even their judgement is Elena's seconds,_ she thinks.

"Really Blondie? You're actually putting out for that psycho?" Damon sneers his hypocritical condemnation and she can't resist an eyeroll and a huff, but she can't think of anything to say. She wants to defend herself somehow but what the hell can she say? After all, not a person in the room hasn't suffered at Klaus' hands.

"Caroline," Matt says next, as if they all want to take a turn bashing her with a sound bite of judgement. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Please guys, can we not do this now? We have bigger things to worry about." She can't think of a way to excuse her actions, so she opts for distraction. It doesn't work, if the stony faces around her are anything to go by.

"Bigger than you screwing the guy who ran Tyler out of town?" Matt's kind face twists sourly, all the hatred of the supernatural that's been building in him since Vicky died finding an outlet in her and she feels his contempt like a physical blow.

"He killed Jenna." Bonnie seems to think she's forgotten his misdeeds and sets about listing them. "And Carol, and Elena. Why the hell would you do that?"

"I know, guys I know ok, I'm sorry." Her stomach churns and tension builds nauseatingly inside her making her skin feel tight and uncomfortable and just on the edge of snapping. "It just happened, ok and it was just one time."

"That doesn't make it ok, Caroline." Matt looks disgusted with her and she could cry seeing the first man she opened her heart to so full of revulsion but somewhere inside she feels something like strength building too.

Or perhaps her patience is just running out.

"Care?" Stefan, who doesn't look any different, she thinks distractedly, looks up worriedly as if finally stirred from his introspection by her transgression. "That's-"

"No," she snaps. She will not listen to Stefan condemn her - he has meant too much to her for too long. They've understood each other, been there for each other since she first faced life as a vampire, and his is one voice she refuses to hear accuse her. He's also the person in the world she trusts the most so it's him she turns to. "No, just no."

"Caroline" Stefan's voice is calm. "We just-"

"No Stefan. Seriously, look around." She waves a hand around the room. "I love you guys, all of you, but look around."

They do, slightly comically. "Ok yes I slept with Klaus, who is, yes, pretty much the worst, but you were on a ripper binge not so long ago. Bonnie's been planning massacres for Silas, Elena is Katherine 2.0 and Damon is Damon all the time. So if the worst I've done is slept with the wrong guy then none of you get to judge me ok? None of you."

She's almost panting when she finishes her outburst but they _do_ look slightly chagrined and for a brief, bright moment it feels like she's made her point when a voice from the door makes her body go stiff and her heart plummet. "What about me Care?" That oh-so-familiar voice asks with anger and pain knotting around it like a poisonous vine. "Do I get to judge you?"

She screws up her face and closes her eyes against the hard, horrible reality and doesn't turn to face him as she says his name in a whisper, "Tyler."

 **A/N dun dun dun Tyler's back gasp!**

 **Ok on a scale of 'not so much' to 'die b*tch die' how much did you all hate this chapter?**


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N as always the splendiferous Gargslywoof provided edits and insight and i am so glad to have her beta-ing my stories.**

 **Hope this chapter pleases. And please don't hate on Tyler, poor lad did just get his heart broken after all :-(**

 **Chapter 9**

 _"So if the worst I've done is slept with the wrong guy then none of you get to judge me ok? None of you."_

 _A voice from the door makes her body go stiff and her heart plummet. "What about me Care?" That oh-so-familiar voice asks with anger and pain knotting around it like a poisonous vine. "Do I get to judge you?"_

 _"Tyler."_

She can't believe the words that spill from her at the sight of her boyfriend. They're the last things she imagines a returning, cheated-on, boyfriend, wants to hear: "What are you doing here?"

His expression is a volatile mixture of incredulity and rage, but she's saved from his response by Damon of all people who steps forward to demand that Tyler show them his wolf and prove himself to not be Silas.

His eyes don't leave her as the others explain why they need him to turn and she's terrified that, if the white-hot anger in his glare is anything to go by, he's in no fit state to control the transformation.

Still he goes to his knees yellow eyes locked on her as his bones break sickeningly in the silence of the room. He's almost a wolf, growling and snarling and not responding to the cries of his name when Damon's boot hard in his face brings him back and he stands and glares at her as his limbs shift back into place.

Behind her she hears Elena laugh, a musically vindictive sound, and Matt try to catch his friend's attention. But the world has shrunk down to the few feet between them and narrowed to the tunnel of his furious gaze.

She looks down unable to face him and he suddenly seems to hear Matt asking him what he's doing there and warning him that it's dangerous and he should run.

"Klaus called me." Tyler spits the name like it's spoiled milk in his mouth and she looks up sharply. "He told me I could come back." He looks at her with contempt chasing hurt all across his face. "To you."

"Tyler-" his name comes out choked and weak. What the hell is she supposed to say to him?

"Is it true?" he demands still half hoping that he has somehow misunderstood, that there's some explanation for her fucking his mother's murderer that he could possible make sense of.

She swallows hard and fights back tears. "Tyler, I'm sorry. I-"

"Christ!"

Tyler slumps down in one of the free chairs and buries his head in his hands and the room falls into awkward silence.

"Guys," Bonnie speaks eventually, her voice uncharacteristically hesitant. "We have to do the spell."

The others all watch Bonnie get to work but she can't tear her eyes from Tyler's bowed head until eventually looks up, and his dark dry eyes lock hard onto her wet ones. His face is pulled tight with anger and she has no idea what she's going to say to him when they finally get a chance to talk. Her mind is all over the place leaping from one addled thought to the next and over and over one question returns to her mind. _Why the hell would Klaus call Tyler?_

Bonnie's rhythm falters and they all turn worriedly to look at the witch. Her friend looks a mess, face drawn and limbs shaking as she stumbles through the complex incantation. _Come on Bonnie,_ she thinks and realises that this is the first time ever that she's doubted Bonnie's ability to save the day.

"Bonnie," a voice calls from outside and the witch stops speaking and looks around. "Bonnie, please don't do this, don't trap me here."

"Silas," Damon spits and runs to the window. Outside Jeremy Gilbert is calling out pleadingly, looking every inch a frightened teenager. Bonnie rushes to the window.

"Jeremy!" she calls.

"Bonnie, Bonnie." Stefan shakes her hard. "It's Silas, come on you _know_ it is."

The witch looks disoriented for a second then she nods and tears trickle from the corners of her eyes. "I know," she whispers.

"The spell, Bonnie, you need to finish it"

With a nod Bonnie returns to her place and begins to chant again. But when Shane's voice tells her that she can't control the expression without him and that she'll end up hurting everyone she loves she leans forward on her hands and breaths like she's run a sprint.

They're losing Bonnie. Losing the only one who can stop Silas. He friend can't cope with him invading her mind and still concentrate on the spell. She realises at the same time as Damon what needs to be done and they both turn to Tyler.

"Tyler, listen," she begins haltingly. "Silas can't mess with you when you're a wolf; you need to distract him so he leaves Bonnie alone long enough for her to kill him."

He looks witheringly at her, his eyes telling her that he's in no mood to do anything she asks.

Damon makes an exasperated noise and pulls his phone from his back pocket.

"Who are you calling?" Matt asks as Damon dials.

"Klaus." Damon tips his phone at Tyler. "You think I'm gonna leave this to a puppy? I'm calling daddy wolf."

Tyler's anger flares, predictably, and he tears off his t-shirt with a snarl. He storms out of the door and Damon smirks triumphantly.

"You're an ass," she tells the elder Salvatore, who just shrugs dismissively.

"Worked didn't it?" he hits the call button on his phone and it's obvious he's talking to Klaus. "Silas is here screwing with Bon-bon" he says then hangs up looking satisfied. "All sorted," he declares.

"Seriously, sorted?" She puts her hands on her hips and glares at Damon. "If by sorted you mean they kill each other."

"Relax Barbie." Damon pours himself a drink looking obnoxiously self-satisfied. "Tyler can't kill Klaus, and I figure Klaus didn't call Tyler back just to kill him. So now we have two hybrids against Silas instead of one, I call that a win."

She shakes her head and turns to the window in time to see Tyler's big black wolf approach Silas with a growl. She bites her lip and lays a hand on the glass wishing she could help him.

Bonnie is trembling all over and has the distinct look of a junkie being offered a hit, clammy-skinned and wild-eyed. So she focuses on getting her friend back in the game. "Bonnie." She takes the witch's hand and rubs it vigorously. "Please, Bonnie, you need to focus, Tyler can't keep Silas busy for long."

The witch nods and hovers her hands above the bowl containing Stefan and Silas' blood as she begins to chant again.

Outside Tyler is taking a beating. It's been easy to forget with all his mental trickery and psychological warfare that Silas is also ancient and powerful in a more traditional sense. The back of his fist connects with Tyler's jaw and the sound of breaking bone carries inside making them all wince. Tyler hits the ground with a yelp and struggles to rise, his growl more lost than menacing as Silas, wearing his true face for all to see now, advances.

Silas lifts the powerful wolf in one hand as if he weighs nothing and hurls him against a tree. "Bonnie," he calls as he turns away from Tyler's fallen form. "Only I can help you. And I _can_ help you. To control your expression, to save your Grams, even to bring back Jeremy."

Bonnie shakes visibly but she grits her teeth and keeps going, blood trickling from her nose. "You're lost without me Bonnie, you'll just keep hurting the ones you love."

The witch falters, the rhythm of her chanting breaking like a wave over Silas' words. "Don't listen Bon-bon," Damon says firmly. "Keep going."

She turns back to the window in time to see Tyler leap at the ancient, only to be caught about the neck in a choking grip. He whimpers and his hind legs claw at Silas as the immortal plunges a hand into his chest.

"No" she screams and just when she thinks Tyler is lost a blur of grey-brown takes Silas from the side and all three of them hit the ground and roll apart. Relief resonates through her body and she lets out a shuddering breath. Klaus is here, he's here and despite her words to Damon earlier a huge part believes that it makes everything ok.

She watches from the window as the two wolves circle Silas, always one in attack and one in retreat as they use their speed and agility to take literal chunks out of their enemy.

They might hate each other, but they are wolves, and the instinct for teamwork runs deep in their blood. The connection between the hybrids as they take on Silas is so ferociously beautiful, so supernaturally natural, that she could almost believe she sees the crimson threads of understanding weaving from one to the other. A pack of two; and together they are more than Silas can contain.

Behind her Bonnie slumps forward with an exhausted wheeze and she realises the spell is complete. The wolves realise seconds later and the ferocity with which they rip Silas' suddenly human body apart is awe-inspiring and frankly a little graphic even for her vampire tastes.

There's a moment of calm as the two wolves stare at each other across the ruined pile of flesh and guts that was once Silas before Tyler leaps at Klaus with a snarl, taking down the smaller wolf in a mess of flashing fangs and harsh growls.

They come apart and circle each other. Tyler stands a few inches taller in the shoulder than Klaus, broader in the chest and more muscled in the haunches but even without knowing the men behind these beasts, even without the matted blood in Tyler's fur, you'd pick Klaus for the winner. There is a conceit to the lazy languid tread and an easy complaisance in his relaxed growl that stands in confident contrast to Tyler's rigid muscles and agitated snarls.

Tyler hurls himself at Klaus again and the elder wolf effortlessly takes the back of his opponent's neck in his jaws, drops to his back and uses his hind legs to hurl Tyler, yelping, into a nearby tree. Tyler stands and comes again at Klaus who seems to have lost patience with the fight and this time pins the big black wolf to the ground by his throat, making Tyler whine pitifully.

She breaks away from Stefan's weak human grip and dashes towards them. "Klaus, please," she cries and the tawny wolf releases Tyler and steps away, his amber eyes fixed on her.

"Thank you," she whispers. The wolf nods and his amber eyes, unnaturally intelligent in the face of a beast, hold hers solemnly. "Klaus-" she starts without a single clue what she'll say after his name, no matter, her words are cut off by his growl as Tyler rises and sinks his fangs into the older wolf's flank.

Klaus wheels around and in a single grotesque and graceful motion spins around the younger hybrid. Limbs extending as he turns so that it's his human body that traps Tyler's wolf with his arm wrapped suffocatingly across the other's windpipe. Eventually lack of oxygen threatens Tyler's consciousness and forces him to turn back to human form.

Klaus releases him and walks naked and unembarrassed straight past her, holding out a hand to Bonnie who's in the doorway clutching the unlinking spell in both hands.

"Love?" he prompts and Bonnie numbly hands it over. He turns it over in his hands for a moment then looks at her, gives a small nod and turns to leave.

"Klaus,." Even now, in front of all her friends – God even in front of Tyler who's rubbing his throat and struggling to his feet – she calls after him. Feels the need to say something, anything, simply to have something pass between them. "Thank you."

His smile is sad, so sad that her heart slows painfully in her chest, but he looks satisfied too and nothing, absolutely nothing, makes sense in her exhausted brain. She takes a step towards him, a step away from Tyler, thinking that must be symbolism or a metaphor or something. But he's gone in a flash and she's left with nothing but empty air and the prospect of the worst conversation of her life.

Damon throws clothes at Tyler and she watches the dark vampire unceremoniously haul Silas' bloody remains onto a tarp. "Fucking wolves," Damon mutters under his breath as of one Silas' arms comes away in his grasp.

Silas is dead and they should be celebrating but now all the problems that had seemed trifling compared with the apocalyptic disaster they've just averted are back to suck the joy from their victory.

Inside she hears the others talking in hushed voices, the words are unclear but the tone is anything but celebratory. She knows Tyler is watching her, waiting for her to look at him and it takes all her strength to turn her already tear filled eyes on him. _This is going to be awful,_ she thinks nauseously.

"How long?" Tyler asks eventually and she knows she owes him these answers. No matter how much it hurts to give them or how shamed she'll feel. No matter even that it won't help him in the slightest to know, she at least owes him honesty now. "How long did you wait before you spread your legs for him?"

"Tyler, please."

"How long?" he barks and she flinches.

"Yesterday, it was yesterday."

"He called me this morning. Told me I could come back if I could make you happy." Hatred for his sire twists Tyler's face into an ugly version of himself and his next words are spat out maliciously. "I guess he couldn't wait to gloat about how he screwed my girl."

She shakes her head in confusion, her mind bouncing back to Klaus again. It doesn't make sense. Klaus, who always, always, takes the chance to hammer home his victories, didn't gloat at all. Instead her turned away, from someone he considers an enemy and a betrayer, and left without a word and left.

Klaus fills her head even with Tyler's heart broken beneath her feet. It is only by sheer force of will that she can drag her thoughts away from the hybrid's abstruse motives and focus on Tyler's anguished questions.

"I'm sorry, Ty." She notices her hands are pressed together in the habit of prayer and she reminds herself that, even if she weren't the sinner here, no deity listens to the pleas of her kind, so she pulls them apart and clamps them to her sides. "I am so, so sorry."

"Sorry?" Tyler is incredulous and disgusted and hurt deep down into his soul and she hates herself for what she's done to him. "You let him touch you. You were supposed to be my girl. 'Until we find a way', that's what you said, then you let him touch you, the same hands that-" he chokes on the rest of that sentence and she shudders.

Had she somehow forgotten that the hands that had felt so good on her body yesterday had also held Carol Lockwood under the water not so long ago? Forgotten too that the mouth that kissed her with such reverence had drained the life from Jenna, and Elena, and thousands of innocents? No, she had not forgotten, but she had seen a different man before her yesterday, a man and not a beast, and yes she'd wanted that man. Wanted him in every cell of her body, every misguided fibre of her stupid heart.

"Why, Care?" he asks and bile rises in her mouth when an answer does not. What the hell is she supposed to tell him? Certainly not the truth - that for one crazy moment she'd forgotten every reason she couldn't be with Klaus and for that brief bright time simply existed in the impossible rightness of _them_.

"It just happened," is her flimsy reply, and because the tired pedestrian response seems to make him even angrier she ploughs on. "I didn't plan it, but he's been around-"

"Jesus, fuck."

"Tyler," she pleads without hope of him calming down and he glowers at her.

"Been around?" Tyler shakes his head his eyes finally wet now with all his pain. "Like I wasn't, right? Because that bastard ran me out of town, remember? He killed my pack and my mom and he ran me outta town and you fucked him because he's been around?"

That makes her sound like a terrible person, but she doesn't have another explanation that won't tear even deeper gouges in Tyler's heart, so she runs with the lie. "Yes."

"Bullshit!" There's a little of his wolf's snarl in his voice as he shoots her down. "You always wanted him. Look me in the eye Caroline and tell me you didn't want him right from the start."

While lying to Damon is easy, lying to Tyler, to her own Tyler, feels like chewing razor blades. Still she tries, because he doesn't need to know that this was always inevitable, that looking back she realises she's been on this course since Klaus perched on her bed so long ago and offered her the world straight from the hot veins in his wrist. "Of course not."

Tyler shakes his head contemptuously; he doesn't believe her, and why the hell should he?

"I'm sorry," she says again knowing even as she does that it's pointless. She'll never get his forgiveness, not for this. But she is desperately sorry that she hurt him and so she'll keep saying it anyway. "I'm so sorry you had to find out like that, I swear I never meant to hurt you."

"My shitty timing right?" he sneers, his face a hard mask of anger, his eyes full of tears. "How was I supposed to find out, when I got my invite to the fucking wedding?"

"Tyler please-"

"He'll make you unhappy, Caroline. Being with that piece of shit will break you."

"I'm not with him, not like that, he-" she bites her tongue before all her tangled feelings - all the burning want, all the mixed-up pity and fruitless longing she has for his sire - come spilling out and grind what's left of Tyler's heart into the blood-stained earth beneath their feet. "I couldn't be, I know that. It just happened, ok, and I'm sorry."

They're silent then for long moments while he fights tears and she twists her hands together and wishes fervently that it will just end soon.

"Was it good?" he says eventually without looking up. Then he closes his eyes looking pained and defeated as he tips his head back. "Of course it was, God."

"Ty don't do this," she pleads and when his eyes snap back to hers they're bleak and full of hate, not just for Klaus but for her too now she thinks as she swims in their dark waters.

"You know what? I hope it was good, I hope it was the time of your life Caroline," he says darkly. "Because you're right - you can't be with him, and you've lost me." She knows that as she watches his broad back disappear that she won't see him again, at least not any time soon. The girl inside that had hoped for a fairy tale ending for them wants to drop to her knees and cry, but the girl she's become since he left, the powerful fierce girl that doesn't take any shit, that girl has _other_ ideas.

The bright lights of the boarding house windows fade behind her as she stirs her temper and heads across town; back again, as always, to him.

"What the actual fuck Klaus?" she snaps as she barges into his home, anger making her choice of words uncharacteristically crass.

"Caroline, what-"

"Am I doing here?" she's feeling mean and sarcastic and exasperated. She's had a god-awful couple of days and his feet seem as good place as any to lay the blame.

"Caroline-"

"Funny story," she doesn't let him speak, she's too riled up - unjustified anger is so often the most persistent. "I got screwed over by this asshole I slept with who's been acting like a giant freak and was so eager to get rid of me he actually called my exiled ex back to take me off his hands."

"Caroline."

"Stop, Jesus. Stop saying Caroline. You know Tyler just walked in on me smacking down with everyone about sleeping with you." He looks uncomfortable and she glares angrily at him. "Yeah. He knows and guess what - he wasn't pleased."

"Caroline," he starts, and when her eyes flash he clenches his fists and talks over whatever she might say. "That is unfortunate timing, but you know you would never have been able to keep it from him; you would have had to face it eventually. I'm sure you'll be able to convince him to forgive you."

"Wow." She shakes her head. Doubts and questions swirl about in her mind but she's feeling too petty and unreasonable to ask any of them. "And you didn't think to include me in this decision? You are unbelievable."

He stands suddenly and steps towards her looking frustrated himself now. "Forgive me if I'm a little confused. Tyler's return is what you wanted." His jaw clenches and for a moment he seems to struggle to control his voice. " _All_ you wanted, as you told Damon just last night."

He heard. Just hours after leaving his bed, he heard her tell Damon that all she wanted was another man - no wonder he'd been such a jackass all day. But she's not ready to let go of the anger that protects her just yet so she rolls her eyes. "Seriously, you think I'd tell Damon anything about my love life?"

"Nevertheless," is all he says and busies himself pouring another whiskey.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" She steps over and snatches his drink, downing it in one and enjoying the angry viridian sparks flashing in the blue of his eyes.

"That you have what you wanted. Freedom to be with Tyler." His eyes cloud and she doesn't enjoy that shade of blue half as much. "Freedom from me."

Her anger goes and without it she is exhausted and confused and something in her stomach won't stop churning. She flops down on the sofa he just rose from and holds up the glass for him to take. He fills it and another and sits beside her.

"I don't get it," she says and takes a sip of the scotch he hands her; without her petty anger the taste is enough to make her eyes sting and she blinks. "This morning I thought you-" she trails off, she imagines he knows what she thought when he played the part of disinterested jerkface.

"I had already decided to call Tyler," Klaus admits. "But I have been resolved to let you go before, Caroline, and yet you come to me and every time you do-" he swirls his drink and sighs. "The agony of hope. I needed you to leave"

She nods her understanding. "And you knew just what would make me go. Guess I'm not as mysterious as I thought."

He nods but doesn't speak so she chews her lip and forms the question that won't leave her alone. "I still don't understand. Why would you suddenly give up now? Why would _you_ ever call _Tyler_?"

"Because you cried," he says and his voice is a little too strong as if he had to push it hard to get it out and couldn't control it. He takes a breath and continues more softly. "You cried, Caroline. The happiest I have been in centuries and you wept for the shame of it." He can't look at her then and she takes the moments with his gaze averted to process his words and her heart aches for him, for both of them.

"That's not why I cried Klaus," she says eventually. He turns to face her and she hates to see his bright, playful eyes so hollow. The question hangs unspoken between them _then why_?

"I cried for you, Klaus, because I know how lonely you are and I knew I couldn't be the one to make it stop." He looks like he's about to speak so she presses on - she has to get this out now. "I mean my mom would freak and my friends would hate me. You are a terrible person. You do horrible things to innocent people. I couldn't be with you."

He gives her a look, chiding her for stating the obvious; already she sees in his eyes that he's readying his defences against her. She won't let him. "And I cried for me because I wanted to be. So much."

His half built defences crumble and he looks away so she gently wraps her hand around his cheek and lifts his gaze to hers. "I didn't cry for shame Klaus, I cried for us, for everything we can't have."

He rest his forehead on hers, connecting them, and she wonders at how familiar a gesture it feels now. His fingers skate up her arm and the hand with which she'd cupped his cheek travels to his elbow. They stay that way for long moments until he asks the inevitable question. "And Tyler?"

"Gone," she says sadly. She mourns the loss of the girl who loved Tyler, the girl for whom life had been so simple, for whom right and wrong had stood clearly apart; she mourns the child she was. The woman she has become dances through the twilight borders where good and evil lie like lovers with limbs entwined, for that woman nothing is simple and yes, she'll miss Tyler for that.

"I'm sorry sweetheart."

"Don't be, we've been over for a long time I guess." She meets his gaze and gathers up her courage; honesty is the order of the day, she thinks, why stop now? "Besides, just because I can't be with you, doesn't mean I want to be with anyone else."

That shocks him; his eyes widen just a fraction and his lips part. She imagines he hadn't expected that level of honesty from her, or perhaps he doesn't ever really believe he could be anything but second choice. She huffs, gives him a rueful smile, and offers him another taste of that honesty. "It's actually really not funny how much I don't want to be with anyone else."

He forces a chuckle then sobers quickly. "I'm not a man inclined to indulge in the futility of wishing," he says in that deep earnest voice of his and the sincerity of his tone makes her heart thump expectantly in her chest. "But I do wish I could have been a man worthy of you Caroline, and if I had been that man, I would have moved heaven and earth to make you happy."

"I know."

They share a small tight smile and her mind rattles with the realisation that this is actually happening, they're actually going to walk away from this thing that's danced around them since the start. Oh they've made deals and promises of separation. They've hurled insults and feigned contempt as they shrouded their connection in scorn but the finality of this is like lead in the air making her breathing slow and laboured and her shoulders feel burdened.

They stand and he kisses her cheek and she longs to hurl herself into his arms like parting lovers but she doesn't. She thinks that if she does she may never let him go and so she turns and makes the endless journey to the door. It's done, she thinks, it has to be. They might wish it were different but they both know they can't be together and wishing won't change that.

At the door she stops, her father, comes to her mind from out of nowhere, standing before her stern and expectant. "I always taught you to try your best. I need you to try your best now." Sure he'd been torturing her at the time and he would definitely not approve of what she's about to do but the parenting lesson still stands. After all her father had always prized effort. He had taught her to strive. Perhaps there can be merit in letting go with grace but that is not the way Bill Forbes raised his daughter.

"No!" She turns on Klaus with eyes blazing determinedly and he blinks dumbly at her. "No wishing, no can't, no what-will-people-think, just no."

"Sweet-"

"If I can't be with you because you are such a terrible person," she draws in a steadying breath and runs a hand through her hair feeling its silk between her fingers. "Well then you are just going to have to be better."

He shakes his head at her audacity, shoots her down with his version of the truth and a little impatience to convince himself. "I have been this way a thousand years."

"And you hate it," it's almost a snarl. She is dauntless now, finally brave in her decision to fight for them and she'll demand the same from him just as her father taught her.

He tries for a scornful look but her insight has shaken him and his effort falls far short of convincing. "The others don't see it," she continues bravely. "But I do. I know you're more than just a monster. That there's a halfway decent guy in there somewhere. So if you'll dig him out from under all your paranoia and bullshit and be the man I know you can be, then I will tell everyone to suck it up and get used to me being with that man."

"Caroline, love, even if that-" he draws in breath and his lips move soundlessly, that way they do when he can't work out what to say. Eventually he shakes his head. "I wouldn't know where to begin, I couldn't-"

"Seriously?" her voice is rising, agitated rather than angry but still energy buzzes between them marking the moment as pivotal and she finds herself pacing and gesturing emphatically as she talks. "You call yourself the most powerful creature on the planet. If that's true you can do anything." She turns on him and takes a chance on what she's almost certain now is the truth. "And if you love me-"

His gaze darts about skittishly and he tries to interrupt her, "Car-"

"If you love me," she cuts him off in a strong, uncompromising voice and stabs her hands downward by her hips for emphasis. She breaths in through her nose and takes a step towards him softening as she goes. "Then you'll try."

And there it is, her offer, her challenge, placed before him. It's up to him now. Maybe he feels the way she thinks he does, maybe he's in love with her, maybe that'll be enough. Or maybe she's a foolish self-involved teenage girl wildly overestimating her own significance.

He steps in, closing the last scrap of distance she's left between them, and snakes his hand in beneath her hair to hold the back of her neck. He looks into her eyes and she gets her answer. "I will try," he says and three other little words are implied not just by his acquiescence but by the reverent timber of his voice and the burning emotion in his eyes.

It should be enough, but she's greedy for more. She's about to alienate her friends, terrify her mother and potentially endanger everyone she's ever met, so sue her, but she's going to get the full works out of him.

She glances down then back up into his eyes and commands him in a silk and steel voice. "Say it."

"Oh sweetheart," he laughs, a slow sad caress across her flushed skin. "I haven't said it in centuries."

"Say it now," she insists. "Be brave right now." She lifts her fingers to touch his cheek. "Tell me what I am risking everything for."

The hand on her neck tightens and he moves still closer into her space, breath ragged as he brings his free hand up to flatten her curls against her temple. "I love you, Caroline."

 **A/N I know i'm sorry to stop there but this chapter was getting longer than the rest so i took an opportunity to stop. Next time I promise we'll be back on track. Possibly, probably, a smutty track too :-)**

 **Hit me with a review if the spirit moves you too**


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